


The ins and outs of living with a naga

by dragoneyes



Series: Unlucky Explorer and Solitary Naga [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Fluff, Interspecies Romance, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Naga!Castiel, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:46:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoneyes/pseuds/dragoneyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is very happy that he met Castiel – in fact, he probably has never been this happy in his whole life – but that doesn't mean that there aren't certain...glaring sociological and ecological differences between their species that they both need to get used to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The welcome back

**Author's Note:**

> Follow-up to "In which Dean Winchester is not a lucky explorer (but he's a lucky man)". You need to read that other one to understand what the heck is going on here.
> 
> Every chapter in this fanfiction is a stand-alone one-shot for this 'verse (I guess you could consider them ~~semi~~ mostly-chronologically-ordered timestaps?); they're scenes that I wanted to write but didn't manage to put into the main story.

Dean was, quite frankly, sick and tired of his brother's fussing.

His return from his ordeal in the Eastern Rainforest was marked by joy and relief – and possibly an embarrassingly long hug between him and his giant brother, but that was not the point – which both turned into excitement once Dean started to narrate his adventure and his encounter with his unlikely rescuer.

After making sure that he was unharmed and properly fed – courtesy of Jess, who managed to leash her hyperactive fiancé long enough to have Dean's eyes properly checked out by the local doctor – he was met with a double dose of gushing geekiness from both his brother and his future sister-in-law.

During the next few days, Dean was prompted to answer all kind of questions about Castiel and what he had found out about his species so far – which he didn't mind indulging, since he had been convinced for a while that he would never see his brother again – until a week flew by, and he was now overdue to his planned meeting with his naga sorta-mate.

The only problem was: Sam refused to let him out of his sight.

In a misguided attempt to 'avoid Dean from getting into trouble again', his stupid sasquatch brother had decided at some point that, clearly, he couldn't be allowed inside the rainforest on his own again, in case he got lost for a second time.

That was the reason why, upon hearing about Dean's appointment, he insisted to tag along.

Now, Dean wouldn't usually deny him something like that – given their past, he liked to spoil his baby brother as much as he could – but he was also aware of the fact that bringing an unknown human with him, before warning Cas about their presence, was definitely not going to end well: his head had replayed that scenario enough times, to firmly convince him that his naga sorta-mate was perfectly able to attack Sammy on sight. While the mytholon seemed to be perfectly comfortable with Dean – which, truth be told, made something warm pulse inside his chest – he also remembered quite clearly how twitchy Castiel had become when they got close to human settlements.

He really didn't dare risking making the two of them meet until he properly talked with the naga about it.

Incidentally, this line of thought was what persuaded him once and for all that it was completely reasonable for him to sneak into the rainforest at the first lights of the day, while his brother was still fast asleep in his bed.

Dean even left a note to let him know where he was going and remind him not to worry too much in his absence...that had to count for something, right?

Besides, he brought a satellite phone and left its number written down. Sammy would be fine!

After making sure to stuff his solar charger and their spare GPS device – the first one having encountered an unfortunate demise in the series of events that lead him to meet with his naga sorta-mate – in his backpack together with a few changes of clothes and some camping utensils he might or might not have taken – if anyone asked, he definitely 'borrowed' them with the intention of giving them back at some point in the future – from the expedition supplies, he made his way around the forest's outskirt.

To make his return to their meeting point easier, Dean and Castiel agreed to use, as a point of reference, the river passing a couple of miles west from the town where the expedition was staying at: Dean would have to walk up the stream, until he found a larger open space which the naga told him had been caused by a small fire that broke out about half a month before. Normally, the vegetation would be too thick and too monotonous for anyone to wander about without some kind of technological aid to pinpoint their location, but the glaring lack of tall trees would still be enough to find the right place: Dean might not be a forest animal, but he was observant enough to notice a large clearing of freshly regrown underbrush.

By the time he reached the river, an hour had passed, and the sun had gone up enough that he was grateful he would be blessed by cooler shadows for the rest of his trip. Sweat was already starting to drip down the back of his neck – the high humidity that characterized that territory not helping in the least – and he wiped it with the cuff of his shirt. It would be much more comfortable if he could just shrug his clothes off, but the lecture Sam gave him about potentially irritating plants – not to mention, the freaking mosquitoes! – was still stuck pretty solidly in his head.

He wondered for an instant if his brother already woke up and found his message, but, judging by the lack of alarmed ringing of his phone, he probably slept in. Dean really couldn't complain about it since it gave him a bit of extra time to meet with Cas, before Sam decided to tear him a new one for sneaking out without as much as a warning.

The walk inside the actual forest ended up being a bit less smooth than he would have liked, what with the plants, the need to avoid animals, and the freaking snakes hiding in the underbrush – fuck cobras, fuck them sideways, seriously! – but when his watch showed that it was about fifteen to ten, he finally saw the vegetation thin out in a large, oval-ish, open space. The undergrowth was still pretty thick, but sunshine passed through the hole in the forest's canopy without problem.

"Freaking finally," Dean sighed, wiping his face from the sweat: his hair was by now drenched and he knew from experience that trying to dry them as well was a lost cause. There was what looked like the leftover of a fallen tree at the clearing's outskirt and, after checking for snakes and bugs nests, he shrugged off his backpack, plopping himself on the mossed log with a huff of satisfaction.

He looked around: there was no sign of Cas yet, so he supposed he should make himself comfortable.

After making sure that his phone was charged and that he hadn't somehow missed a call from his brother – he didn't, and, if he was lucky, he would still enjoy a few more hours of peace – before pulling a bottle of water out of his backpack and drinking half of it: the temperature itself wasn't particularly hot around there – not more than summers were where he came from – but the high humidity made everything that much worse.

He really freaking hoped that the naga was going to arrive soon: the cool air of Castiel's cave was much more pleasant than the sticky mess currently clinging to his skin. Not to mention that, after what happened the last time, he really didn't trust that forest at all: with his luck he was going to get attacked by a tiger or something...

This particularly sentiment only grew tenfold when he heard the underbush at half a dozen feet to his right rustle, and a black snake – another freaking cobra! What the actual fuck! – slithered out the tall grass and fixed its beady eyes on Dean.

Oh, hell no!

Glaring at the little shoelace-shaped asshole, he patted his way around the log on which he was sitting until he found a dead branch that he could easily snap from the rest of the trunk. The whole time he kept his eyes on the snake still peering back at him, not daring even for an instant let it out of his sight.

With slow, careful movement he stepped closer, keeping the branch between them and using it to sweep the ground and keep the cobra's attention on it.

"Come on, you little psycho," he growled, squinting when the snake curled a bit on itself and hissed in the direction of the offending piece of wood. "You don't want to stay here as much as I don't want you to..." he added before trying for a quick poke at the nearest black coil.

The cobra hissed loudly for a second time and then suddenly it was snapping forward to bite at the branch that had dared to touch it, giving it a quick venomous bite, before promptly scampering off back where it had come from.

Dean let out a sigh, his shoulders relaxing: at least this time it wasn't one of the spitting jerkasses that blinded him only a week ago. He made his way back to the fallen tree trunk he was using to rest, the branch still safely in his hand in case another one of those slithering nightmares decided to swish by.

He barely had time to drop his ass back on the mossy wood, before a voice spoke right behind his head.

"Hello, Dean."

The way he jumped and scrambled towards the center of the clearing was, truth be told, quite embarrassing, but, what the fuck, it wasn't like that forest had brought him much luck so far!

"Jesus Christ, Cas!" he shout, his voice coming out slightly hysterical while his heart hammered in his chest like it was making a valiant attempt at clawing its way out of it. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!"

The naga frowned, his lips pursing in a confused line. He was hanging upside down from a nearby tree, his head more or less at the height of Dean's own – which was probably the reason why the latter didn't hear him come closer to begin with.

"Of course not, Dean," Cas replied. He looked as gorgeous as ever, all ruffled hair, baby blue eyes, and taut muscles shifting under an endless expanse of scales with his every move. Dean totally blamed the cute squint directed at him for the way his chest squeezed and his body instantly relaxed at that sight.

A slow grin formed on his lips and he only managed to resist for a few more moments before stepping closer once again, his hands finding their way in Castiel's hair and tilting his head up a bit. Their eyes met, and Dean saw a smile turn the corner of the naga's lips upwards.

"Hey there, handsome," he hummed, gaze shifting to the other's ever-chapped mouth before going back to staring into inhuman blue orbs, "come here often?"

"I live here," the mytholon deadpanned and the grin on Dean's face only grew wider.

" 'course you do, Cas," he breathed right on his lips, leaning in to join their mouths together.

The kiss was kind of awkward thanks to the weird upsidedown position his sorta-mate had taken, but it was the best thing that had happened to Dean in the whole last week.

It came out sweet, and stupid, and they fumbled without much success to find a way to involve tongue in it.

It was also fucking perfect.

"For the record: you might have some serious Spiderman moves there, but I'm still not Mary Jane," he murmured against the other's lips, before snorting in amusement when Cas' face scrunched up once again in confusion. There were crinkles at the corner of his eyes that Dean kind of wanted to nip at.

"Now come down from your perch so that I can kiss you properly."

He didn't need to repeat his request twice: as soon as those words left his mouth, the naga gave out a pleased hiss and pulled himself back up in a cloud of leaves. From Dean's position it was difficult to pinpoint his location through the thick foliage, but the rustling that followed Cas' moves was enough to get him an idea of what he was doing.

When the naga finally spiraled down the trunk of the tree he had been resting on, there was a bundle of brownish feathers in his arms and a fervent expression on his face.

"I hunted some food," he explained, holding out what ended up being four small birds. Their plumage was dull and their yellow eyes dead, and there were no outer wounds that Dean could see – the naga must have chocked them to death.

Technically this wasn't the first time that he stared at a lifeless animal – he used to hunt when he could find the time after all.

Technically he also had some snickers bars he could nimble on, and he had to admit that it was kind of weird that the first thing given to him by his naga sorta-mate was a bunch of dead birds.

"Are...are they fine?" the hesitation in Cas' voice made him look up, and he silently cursed himself when he saw the uncertainty on the other's face: the mytholon looked nervous as fuck, as if he were waiting for Dean to evaluate his hunting skills or something.

"They're great," he grinned, trying not to be a jackass about something that was obviously a present. "Look at you providing for me and everything," he added, stepping closer and ruffling Castiel's hair. It prompted out a scandalized whine that was all kind of adorable, to be honest.

"You're Dean: this is the least I could do," pulling himself away from his hand, the naga peered at him with a shy, little grin on his face and, wow, there must be something wrong with his chest, because Dean suddenly felt like a small sun was burning inside of it.

Of course, since Dean often forgot that he should check what came out of his mouth before saying it out loud, that was the moment when he commented, "Although, dude, I don't know if you remember, but I can't actually eat them raw."

The flinch that followed and the way Castiel's face drained of all color at his words, made him mentally cringe.

"Shit, shit, fuck! That came out wrong!" he was quick to backtrack when he saw the naga's tail curl up in a bunch of tight coils of distress and his blue eyes widen with self-reproach, "I didn't mean it like that! I'm happy you brought me food, Cas: I'm usually the one providing for other people and no-one ever did something like this for me."

He took a deep breath, sorting out his thoughts before continuing, "You're the first one to treat me like I'm worth something..." he could feel his cheeks grow warm at that admission but he needed to make things clear with the mytholon: the idea that Castiel could misinterpret his reaction for an accusation of fault on his part, made something bitter and ugly twist inside his stomach.

With a few slow steps he closed the distance between them and leaned to press his forehead against the other's, leaving him plenty of time to pull away if he so desired.

"I'm glad I've got you, Cas," he murmured on chapped lips before pressing their mouths together in a sweet kiss.

"Besides, I can always cook them once we're back at your nest," he grinned with a wink that finally managed to pull a tiny smile out of the other.

"I still don't understand why humans need to burn everything," the naga hummed, leaving another brief kiss on Dean's lips before pulling away. "They're perfectly eatable like they're."

Dean scrunched up his nose and shuddered at the idea of putting any kind of uncooked animal in his mouth.

"I don't know how _you_ do that," he replied, eyeing the bundle of feathers in Castiel's arm with critical distrust: he supposed that it made sense for the other to eat anything the way they were provided in nature – the guy was half-snake after all – but the only way to convince him to do the same was to take from him the means to start even the smallest of fires.

"Like this," when Dean brought his gaze back on Cas' face, the naga was raising one of the birds by its little neck and tilting his head backwards.

It took him a moment to understand what the other's intentions were, and then the small volatile was pushed inside Castiel's mouth, and the most fucking disgusting thing happened AND HOLY SHIT THROATS WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!

Feeling his stomach twist with the need to throw up at the sight of Castiel swallowing the pigeon-sized bird _in one bite_ , Dean clenched his mouth shut and stubbornly tore his gaze away from that sight, staring at a random bush in the distance instead.

That was one experience he would have done without.

_EW!_

"Dean?" Castiel's confused query made him take a deep breath and try very hard to push that image away from his mind, before he moved his eyes once again on the naga. Thankfully he seemed to have finished with his creepy swallowing show.

"It's nothing," Dean cleared his throat while he forced himself to focus all his attention on Castiel's face. Oh, hey, flicking tongue tasting the air! _That_ was nice to watch.

"I'm kind of happy you don't eat humans, though," he added with a grin as he felt his confidence slowly take over again.

"As I already mentioned, I was told your kin tastes awful," the naga replied, pink lips bending into an amused smile. "Also I don’t particularly care for the taste of blood, and I normally only hunt what I can swallow whole."

And then again maybe Dean could get used to certain disquieting aspects of his sorta-mate's anatomy.

"That's...uh..." he gulped, trying to prevent the heat that came with the image of his dick inside Castiel's mouth from showing on his face. It was a lost cause from the get-go, but he at least had to try.

Besides, they would have plenty of time to try that later...

"That's very reassuring," flashing a grin of his own, Dean stepped closer once again. He waited just enough time for Castiel to lay the birds still in his arms on the ground, and then he cupped the mytholon's cheeks to pull him into another kiss. A pair of lean arms immediately wrapped around his waist and the naga's naked chest was pressed flush against his shirt.

"God, I fucking missed you," he breathed while peppering the Cas' lips with teasing nips and gentle licks. When he peered at the other's face, he found that his eyes were half-closed, lips quirked into a pleased smile while the naga instinctively rubbed his cheek against the warmth coming from Dean's palm. A content sound reached his hears, and then the hands resting at the small of his back slid lower to grab his ass, while a nimble tongue pushed against his mouth until he granted access to it.

When the naga easily lifted him from the ground, a shudder shook Dean's body from head to toe. He would never get over how hot Cas' inhuman strength was: the guy could pin him down to the closest surface for the rest of his life and it would still send a rush of blood right to his dick every single time.

Wrapping his legs around the other's waist, Dean let the mytholon manhandle him however he wanted, while he took advantage of that new position to slide one of his hands down Castiel's back and rub the small ridges that ran down both sides of his spine.

A soft moan was hissed right against his ear and then a double-tipped tongue flicked against it, cool and wet on his overheated skin. It felt awesome and he reciprocated without hesitation by pressing his lips against Castiel's neck: he had no idea if scales could get hickeys, but he sure as hell was going to try!

"Dean..." Cas let out a needy groan and then Dean found himself lowered on an endless expanse of scaled coils, a naga firmly pressed against his chest and their hips grinding against one another in search of more contact.

The naga's bulge caught against his crotch with their every move, filling Dean's belly with arousal, and then a hand slipped under his shirt, tracing its way up and Dean really, really, really hoped he was finally getting naked, because he could feel his hard dick trying valiantly – but without much success – to burst right through his pants, and if they didn't do something about it he was going to—

They both jumped when Dean's cellphone suddenly ringed to life.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" the human couldn't help but shout in frustration. He knew that he probably sounded a bit whiny as well, but all his annoyance at at being interrupted was put aside when he saw the alarmed look on Castiel's face: the naga was staring unblinkingly at the pocket where the sound was coming from, both pupils narrowed into thin vertical lines and his tongue flicking madly in the air.

His tail was also nervously squeezing its way around Dean's waist.

"Whoa there, Cas," the human reached out to rub one of the mytholon's shoulders to let him know that everything was fine, "it's just my phone. Nothing dangerous, I swear."

The naga didn't seem particularly convinced, but he let go enough that Dean was able to pull the cause of the other's distress. When the first shout came through, he couldn't help but wince and put a bit of distance between his abused ear and the receiver.

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!"

Of course it had to be his brother. Fucking of course.

"Hello to you too, Sammy," Dean rolled his eyes while he studied the confusion making its way on Castiel's face. Catching the mytholon's eyes, he pointed at his own mouth, then at the receiver and finally at his ear in an attempt to silently explain how the phone worked.

The squint on the other's face grew deeper for an instant, but it was followed soon enough by a slow nod of understanding.

" 'Hello'?!" Sam's voice brought Dean's attention back on the fretting sasquatch at the phone. " 'Hello'?! We woke up and you were gone! _Gone_ , Dean! Leaving us only with two vague lines about going inside the forest without any kind of backup whatsoever!"

"You wouldn't let me go on my own!" Dean started to protest, ready to defend once again his conclusion that that was the only way to solve the issue without anyone accidentally getting hurt by distrustful nagas, but he was cut short by Sam's sharp reply.

"The last time you did, you got lost! And you weren't even on your own!" at times it really was easy to imagine his brother's bitch faces just by his tone.

"Whatever, I did just fine!" Dean rolled his eyes for a second time, wondering why his little brother was more of a mother hen than any actual mother he knew. "I found Cas, and didn't get lost. You're welcome for the number by the way, if I knew you were going to be so bitchy about it, I wouldn't have left it behind."

"Dean, that's not the poi—" Sam's answer was interrupted when a loud, threatening hiss filled the air.

When Dean raised his gaze back on Castiel, the naga was staring at his phone like he wanted to melt it with the sheer force of his glare. The scaled flesh around his waist was squeezing it once again in a sign of the mytholon's discontent at the tone that was being directed at his mate.

Well, that really wasn't a good way to start Cas' acquaintance with his brother.

In an attempt to soothe the other's annoyance, Dean laid his free hand on the closest coil, stroking it in slow circles, while he made sure to keep his fingers splayed wide to let as much warmth as possible seep through them.

It seemed to have at least a bit of effect, as the naga's shoulders relaxed slightly, but the other's attention was still solely focused on the phone resting against Dean's ear.

"Is that the naga?"

When Sam's careful – or hopeful? No, _curious_ – query came through, Dean watched while Castiel tilted his head sideways and narrowed his eyes in a squint filled with suspicion and distrust.

"Cas. His name is Cas," Dean replied, his voice quieter now that Sam had finally calmed down. There was some kind of quick mumbling coming through the unsteady reception, but he was able to clearly distinguish a female voice nonetheless, and he wondered if Jess had been listening on their call the whole time.

"Can I speak to him?" Sam finally asked, his tone now carefully neutral.

Dean wasn't fooled even for an instant: he could clearly hear the excitement that was lurking just underneath the surface, ready to bubble up as soon as he passed the phone to the naga. If he wasn't careful, Castiel risked to be subjected to his brother's pure and unashamed scientific curiosity, and he really would rather avoid for the mytholon's first interaction with Sam to end up making him feel like some kind of specimen to be studied.

Sam wasn't insensitive or anything like that – in fact, there were reasons why Dean kept calling him a girl – but he tended to become very pushy when his scientific curiosity was stirred into full out Nerdy Mode.

"I don't think that's a good ide—" Dean was ready to bear with the inevitable discussion that would follow his refusal, but all his worry became irrelevant when cool fingers wrapped around his hand and the phone was carefully pried away from his hold.

"Cas?" he peered at the naga to ask him what he had in mind now, but the only answer he received was a squeeze around his waist, soon followed by the locking up of every coil he was wrapped in and the distinctive sensation of being forced in place without much difficulty on the other's part.

"Hey, give it back!" he waved his hand in his cellphone's direction when the naga slithered a few feet further away from him. Blue eyes were staring at him but he had no idea how to interpret the weird expression on Castiel's face.

When the mytholon shook his head and put even more distance between them – taking advantage of his tail's considerable length – Dean started to struggle against the thick flesh still keeping him solidly in place: there was no way he was getting out of it if Castiel didn't want him to, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to at least try!

If possible, the hold on him became even tighter, a few more coils wrapping around his legs while Castiel peered at him for a handful of seconds still, before promptly turned the other way. He was raising the phone to his ear and Dean frowned when he saw him hiss something at the speaker. From his position he couldn't quite hear what he was saying – and he suspected the naga of putting those ten feet of distance between them just for that purpose – and even the other's posture was giving nothing away.

There was no inkling of any kind of frightened shout or excited squeal from his brother either, so it couldn't be that bad, right?

"Cas?" he called when a few minutes passed and the naga still didn't seem prone to end the call. Distracted by his request for attention, the mytholon peered at him from above his shoulders, slowly blinking while he studied Dean with attention. He didn't say a word, turning instead back to speak a few more hurried words at the phone before finally slithering back.

"All done? Had a good chat?" the human commented once the phone was safely back in his hands, his tone descending slightly into miffed sarcasm at being cut out from the conversation in that way.

"I clarified a few things with him," was all Castiel gave as a justification for his actions and Dean would have gladly asked more about it if Sam's voice didn't come through the phone once again: apparently the naga hadn't ended the call after all.

"Hey, you still there, Dean?"

"Yeah, what?" he brought the phone back to his ear and asked with a sigh, eyeing his mytholon sorta-mate to let him know that this wasn't over.

"I'm gonna go," Sam's reply came accompanied with the faint buzzing of interference, as if his brother were moving from one place to another while talking. "You make sure to call, or I swear I'm sending a rescue party after you."

"Whatever you say, bitch," Dean rolled his eyes.

"Jerk," was all he received as a reply and then the line went dead. With an annoyed grumble about being treated like a little kid by his _younger_ brother, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and turned his attention back on Castiel.

"So, what was all that about?"

"I let him know that I wasn't pleased with the tone he used with you. He sounded threatening..." the naga replied with a small shrug that looked entirely like a too human gesture to be in the mytholon's repertoire – was Cas starting to pick up social cues from Dean? Uh.

"Dude, Sammy just loves fretting over everything," the human replied, further specifying when he saw the confused squint that was directed at him, "he was just worried."

"Yes, he said as much," Cas concurred with a sigh, looking just a little bit embarrassed about that whole exchange. "Still, he promised he won't talk to you like that again if he knows I'm around."

"Of course he did," Dean grinned, shaking his head in amusement: his baby brother, always the good boy-scout.

"He also made me promise to make you call him at least once a day."

Ok, no, correction: his baby brother wasn't a boy-scout at all, he was downright crafty and evil!

"Of course he did," this time Dean groaned in defeat, closing his eyes and letting himself fall back against the scaled flesh spread in a loose spiral all around them. Part of Castiel's tail was still holding his waist, and it started to shift in gentle strokes when the naga noticed his distress. Careful fingers traced the line of his jaw in an affectionate caress and, when Dean opened his lids once again, he was met by a worried pair of blue eyes.

Without thinking, Dean wrapped a hands behind the naga's neck and pulled him down to press their mouths together. Their lips brushed in a series of brief and soft kisses, their breathes mingling with one another, until Castiel tilted his head to lean their foreheads together.

"We should go back to your nest," Dean hummed, enjoying the way Cas' lips twitched upwards at his words: from that distance it was easy to see every little change in the other's expression. "We can't waste the food you hunted for me."

A pleased hiss left the naga and then his tongue slipped out of his mouth to flick happily against his mate's lips. It was kind of tickling and it made Dean chuckle, but it was adorable nonetheless.

It took them a few instants to get all limbs involved sorted out – allowing him to get back on his feet – and, when the mytholon hesitantly reached out to entwine their fingers together, Dean grinned and squeezed his hand back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter now has a [followup porny timestamp](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4021762/chapters/9040075).


	2. Cinnamon

Dean woke up to the smell of cinnamon.

It registered, even before he fully emerged from sleep, in the crispy deliciousness of apple pie, and it tickled his nose until his belly rumbled at the prospective of something that he was still only vaguely aware couldn't be there.

It wrapped his senses in a warm embrace, making a pleased smile rise to his face while he turned on his side. He licked his lips and blindly reached out in search of the body he knew to be there: he and Cas had been lazing around for most of the day – Dean still having some trouble adjusting to the sticky heat of the forest and the naga deciding to take advantage of his lethargy to curl up on the pelt-bed with him – and the last thing he remembered before falling asleep was a cool chest pressed against his back, and a gentle hand sneaking its way under his shirt to draw lines on his belly.

It took him several moments of blindly feeling his way around to realized that there was no-one there for him to pull back closer to his body. Squinting his eyes open, he let out a displeased groan, not entirely willing to wake completely and yet even less attracted by the prospective of going back to sleep without his armful of scaled flesh.

"Cas?" he called, hoping that the naga was nearby.

When no sound came back, he huffed in annoyance and slowly plopped himself up on his elbow, letting his gaze sweep the rest of the cave; apparently the naga was really not home. Maybe he went hunting while Dean was napping: the human had found out after the first week of living together, that usually Castiel went looking for preys at either dusk or dawn – when the sun was low enough on the horizon and it still was not quite night.

Judging by the sun's glare that Dean could see at the entrance of the cave, it was still day outside, but sometimes the naga was weird about feeding himself, and he would eat enough food to fill three human adults and then sleep almost a whole day straight, only waking up when he needed to drink.

Dean had realized, after the first time he was caught unaware by this peculiarity in his mate's behavior, that, as much as he liked laying besides the naga and stroking his face and hair while he slept, he needed something to pass the time with or the boredom would eventually kill him. There wasn't much that he could do on his own – not with Cas insisting on taking care of his every need – but in the few trips back to town that followed that episode, he invested in some books and what Jess called an "e-reader" – which Dean secretly thought to actually be short for "Devil's machine".

With a yawn he rose to his feet, stretching his arms and making his neck pop pleasantly, before moving to the duffle he used to store his clothes and grabbing a pair of pants. Normally he wouldn't even dare to go around in the forest in his boxers alone, but Castiel's cave seemed to be blessed by a complete lack of mosquitoes of any kind – which, incidentally, made it even more awesome in Dean's eyes – and there was no way he wouldn't take advantage of _that_ to shed as much clothing as possible as often as possible, and have a bit of respite from the tropical heat.

Once his skin was mostly covered by cotton and denim, it finally hit him that there was something definitely out of place. Dug into the walls of the cave were small holes that his mate used to store his things – mostly ointments and rudimentary instruments that the naga made himself, Dean found out. They were usually kept closed by well-fitting rocks, but this time around a handful of them were open and – upon further inspection – empty of their content.

He still had to memorize what was kept inside each hole, but when his landed on the grooves in the wall next to him, he was almost completely sure that he had never seen those ones open before. It made him wonder what Cas had taken out of them.

With curiosity buzzing through his body and a renewed bounce to his pace, he made his way outside, shielding his eyes with his hand when he took the first step on the gravel shining under the sun. Castiel's cave rested at the base of a slope which was mostly made of hard rock and didn't give much leeway for anything but grass and moss to grow on it. This, aided by the forty-feet-long pond in which spilled the stream of water that came out of the naga's home, made it possible for enough light to filter through the thinner canopy to make it quite pleasant.

Dean highly suspected that one of the reasons why Cas decided to make his nest there, was to be found in the several times he had walked in on his mate curled up in one of the large sun patches that characterized the gravelly shore, enjoying the warmth of direct sunrays on his scales.

As he made his way around the pond, he spotted the naga's familiar figure: he was resting at a few feet from the shallow waters, his tail curled in loose loops around him in a sign of relaxation, while he leaned over something that Dean couldn't quite see clearly from where he was standing.

"Hey, Cas!" the human called, moving towards the mytholon. The smell of cinnamon was stronger here, he noticed while he carefully made his way through the mass of scaled coils shifting closer as if to greet him in return.

"Hello, Dean," blue eyes raised to glance back at him while a smile played on Castiel's lips, before the naga made an absent gesture for him to sit down, "how was your sleep?"

"Pretty good," Dean replied while he let himself plop on the ground next to the other, "but I kind of missed my morning dose of scales when I woke up," he added, grinning when he felt the mytholon's tail crowd closer against his back and sides. It took only a few instants for it to spill over his lap and squeeze his waist with affection.

"You were resting so deeply I thought to let you be while I took care of this," Castiel admitted, gesturing at his left: on the gravelly ground, comfortably nestled between small gray rocks and short grass, laid three wooden bowls that Dean had missed to notice so far. Two of them were filled with an amber-colored liquid that looked thick and oily, while the third, smaller one was filled with a reddish powder that, judging by its smell alone, couldn't be anything other than ground cinnamon.

"What'cha doing?" the human asked, his curiosity stirring at that sight: he had noticed how the naga tended to smell of that particular spice every once in a while, but he had never gotten around questioning his mate about it.

"I'm scenting the oil," Castiel explained, pointing first at a tree that Dean was pretty sure was a palm of some kind, and then at the smaller bowl next to him, "I extract it from its fruit and then let it rest with the...hum..." he hesitated for an instant and then hissed something that the human guessed to be the naga's word for cinnamon, "for a few days."

"And then?" Dean prompted when he saw the mytholon pause, "What do you do with it? Because the only thing I've ever seen cinnamon used for is cooking, and you don't do that."

Realization seemed to hit Cas at that point, as if he had not considered so far that the human might want to know anything of the sort; his eyes widened for an instant and then he propped one of the bigger bowls on his lap, sticking his fingers in it and pulling them out coated in scented oil.

"I use it to clean my scales and to keep bugs away," the naga clarified, rubbing his hands together until they were both shining with it.

Dean stared: that was not what he had been expecting.

He watched as a runaway drop of oil slipped down the underside of Castiel's forearm, and he absently licked his lips, feeling his mouth going dry in spite of the forest's humidity. It was easy to imagine the naga's gorgeous tail shining and writhing under his hands – Dean's fingers slicking every inch of it while they rubbed down the pinkish scales covering Cas' belly, lips following in their trail to take in the delicious taste of cinnamon that they would leave behind in their track – and he wasn't surprised to feel his dick twitch with interest at that prospective.

"So you were going to put it on now?" he asked, his voice sounding a bit rough even after he cleared his throat.

"That was my intention after I put the new batch to rest, yes," Castiel nodded, gesturing at the ground cinnamon that only now the human realized was supposed to be put in the oil bowl still resting next to it.

"D-do you need a hand with it?" God, why was Dean stuttering now? It wasn't like he had never enjoyed a sexy massage before! Granted, he usually was the one receiving it – for some reason people of both genders seemed to think that since "he was so pretty" he deserved to be spoiled accordingly – but getting his hands on the naga would be anything but a downside.

"It would be appreciated," the mytholon hummed at his proposal, "I always have difficulties reaching my back."

After a few minutes in which Dean restlessly watched the naga mix the reddish spice with the oil base, slithering back inside the cave to put both bowls involved in the procedure in their proper place when he was satisfied with his work, the human let out a slow sigh and threated his fingers through his short hair. He could still see Castiel's tail from where he was sitting, even while the other was still puttering inside the cave, and he absently watched the black tip flick back and forth, digging a shallow hole in the gravel.

Truth be told, his current inability to ignore the oil bowl still resting next to him was quite embarrassing, and the strong scent of cinnamon that was coming from the liquid inside of it was being completely merciless in its efforts at catching Dean's attention.

He should really feel ashamed of how short it took for him to break and reach out to prop the bowl in his lap. Watching the amber-colored mixture thickly slosh around, he licked his lips, biting on them when his mind – unsurprisingly – provided him once again with the image of Castiel's body slicked and writhing under the sun.

"You should probably put it on too," he almost jumped out of his skin when the naga's comment was murmured right next to his ear, the other's face hovering just a few inches above Dean's shoulder.

"You seem to have several bug bites on you," Castiel continued, ignoring the alarmed glare that was sent in his way to slowly drag a finger from the hinge of his mate's jaw down to the base of his neck.

A shiver ran through Dean's body at that contact before he could quite stop it, while the little restrain he still had managed to hold on crumbled into a pile of ash. With sharp moves he turned to wrap a hand around Castiel's nape, pulling him closer for a kiss. It was urgent and needy, and the human let out a satisfied sigh before switching his focus on sucking the naga's chapped lips. Humming with contentment, he took a moment to lick the two small dips just below the mytholon's nose, knowing how sensitive they were, and then slowly pulled away.

"You've no idea what you do to me, hum?" he quietly chuckled when he noticed the bewildered – if pleased – expression on the naga's face.

"I...am not sure what prompted that reaction," the mytholon admitted, his forehead slowly creasing in a confused frown.

"Really? Because I'm pretty sure you kind of suggested I get my hands all over your scales," Dean replied, an amused grin forming on his lips when he saw realization finally strike the other.

"Dean!" the naga protested, his tongue slipping out to flick wildly in the space between them while his tail bunched up together in tight coils behind his back.

"You also suggested you should get your hands on me," the human laughed at that scandalized reaction: while the naga didn't shy away from trying to jump Dean's bones – in fact he was quite pushy when he was in the right mood – he tended to be taken aback whenever the human was the first to imply anything sexual between them.

The fact that the squinty glare he usually received in return looked more adorable than threatening, also didn't help in deterring his need to poke as much fun at the naga's expenses as possible.

As predicted Castiel's lips pursed in displeasure, a frown creasing his forehead, but it took Dean only a few instants to realize that he wasn't going to escape unscanted from retaliation this time: without any warning whatsoever, scaled flesh sneaked around Dean's chest from behind, pulling him flat on his back so suddenly that he couldn't help a loud and indignified squeak of surprise from leaving his throat. He tried to struggle against the restrain, but the naga's tail was holding him unbudgingly.

"Cas!" he whined once it became clear to him that he wouldn't be able to get free anytime soon, but his protests were ignored when the naga leaned closer to loom over him.

"If you don't behave, I'll do it on my own," Castiel stated, blue eyes sparkling with amusement. "I don't strictly need your help, but I would much rather have your assistance: it would make things quicker."

Dean pouted.

It sounded too much like putting a juicy burger in front of him and demanding that he only ate half of it.

It was downright cruel.

Buh.

"Fine," he reluctantly conceded in the end, "but I get to help with your tail too," he added with a small grin when he felt the tip of that particular appendage lightly flick his neck and snuggle under his chin in agreement, wrapping all the way around his throat soon afterwards.

Dean let out a sigh of contentment and his eyes fell half-closed while his muscles relaxed against the other's hold. It always made his insides tingle pleasantly when the naga did that. It felt kind of like a full-body hug, not insistent in spite of its firmness, but strong enough to promise safety and protection against any outside threat.

It hadn't escaped him that Castiel seemed to really like having his tail around his neck, but he hadn't come around inquiring about it yet. He always got distracted so easily when he was around the mytholon that it was a miracle either of them managed to do anything constructive when they were together.

"If you want my help, you're gonna have to let me go," he hummed, patting the cool flesh that was still holding him firmly against the ground. The naga was staring back at him, blue eyes softening into a fond expression that made Dean grin in return. He could feel his cheeks begin to burn under the other's gaze, and he pulled himself back in a sitting position once Castiel's tail gave him a last squeeze of affection and then slowly loosened its grip on him.

"So, how do you want me?" Dean's asked, his grin growing wider when a double-tipped tongue flicked between them in warning.

"You said you wanted to take care of my tail," Castiel replied, gesturing at the appendage still partially wrapped around the human's chest and hanging loosely around his shoulders. "So I'll start from the top. Then you can help with my back once we're both done."

Nodding in understanding, the human scooted closer so that the oil bowl rested within easy reach. Carefully he untied the tail from around his neck, chuckling when the black tip flicked him playfully on his cheek, and laid it in his lap.

"So, how often do you do this?" he asked while he dipped his fingers into the thick cinnamon-scented liquid and started to rub it on dark scales. "I never saw you do this before."

"I'm not sure, I usually take care of it whenever my scales feel too dry," Castiel hummed in consideration. "I tried to take care of it either when you were back with your people or when you were sleeping: it felt too much like wasting time to do it when I could as well be enjoying your presence."

"You big softy," Dean laughed while he let his hands slide up the pattern of the naga's tail. It always entranced him how badass the black and blue diamonds looked, and the fact that Cas' scales felt kind of great under his fingertips made it very difficult for him to keep his hands to himself most of the time.

Which was exactly why he was so grateful to be helping the other right now.

It took them the best part of two hours to make sure every part of Castiel's tail was covered in oil, Dean getting distracted every time he stumbled upon an old scar he had never noticed before: sometimes he forgot that the naga lived, essentially, in the wild with all the risks that came from it, and, while usually the mytholon's size was enough to discourage most predators from approaching him, there were still those few, bolder ones that decided to try their luck and managed to injure the naga before realizing how severely outmatched they were.

"What about these ones?" Dean inquired when his attention was caught by two moon-shaped lines of small scars at only a couple of feet from Castiel's hips. They looked very old and had mostly faded, but their white-ish hue still contrasted against the darker background of the other's scales.

The naga followed his gaze and his expression softened.

"They are from when I was younger," he replied, absently reaching out to rub at the ruined skin. "They are the ones I sustained when I was caught in the trap that Jimmy rescued me from."

Frowning at the memory of how near his mate had been to risking permanent damage from what was essentially poaching, Dean instinctively joined his hand with the other's, entwining their fingers together. He let his fingertips skirt over the thin scales covering their back and then squeezed their palms together.

He wasn't entirely sure if he was reassuring himself or the other with that gesture, but the contact made him feel like a small sun had decided to take residence in his belly nonetheless.

"I'm glad he found you," he grumbled, warmth rising to his cheek even before he admitted those words out loud. The wide smile that his statement elicited and the press of Castiel's lips on his own were definitely worth the embarrassment.

"Now turn around: I promised to take care of your back too," he gruffily added once he saw the unconditional affection that was filling the other's blue eyes, his insides squirming at the thought of how much of a girl he was being.

The naga didn't seem to mind, and he leaned in to pressed a second kiss on Dean's lips while his free hand rose to cup the human's face, rubbing his cheek. It was enough to prompt any further thought of that kind into fleeing away from his mind, leaving only warmth and contentment in their wake.

With a soft sigh that might have been just a step away from a needy whimper, Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh scent of cinnamon that by now had wrapped both of their bodies: maybe being a girl had its perks after all.

When the naga finally turned around to give him access to his back, Dean resumed his work with a dazed grin on his face.


	3. Shedding

"There you go, kid," the dark woman huffed under the weight of the heavy pot she placed at Dean's feet. "I hope you know I had to call in some favors to get it: that nest of harpies they found up north in the forest got the attention of half of the people around here."

"Thanks, Missouri," Dean mumbled in return, feeling his cheek redden a bit with guilt. He knew about the nest: Sam had told him that, a handful of days before, one of the locals had come back from a trip claiming to having seen winged women screeching at each other from one tree to another, and his baby brother – the nerd that he was – had decided it was worth investigating since harpies weren't exactly the most common mytholon around.

It also kept the whole expedition busy since, on Castiel's front, there wasn't much they could do aside from waiting for Dean to gather informations on the naga for them – Dean had been quite insistent in his claims that his scaled friend would _not_ welcome other people around his nest and, slowly, even Sam had subsided in his requests to meet the mytholon.

"Now...you said you wanted flour and sugar too, right?" Missouri asked, a little amused smile playing on her lips while she made to move towards the door that gave on the storage room. She was the one in charge of the expedition's supplies, haggling with locals when they needed to buy food or common essentials from them and taking track of everything that circulated in the camp. In the month that they had been there, she had somehow already managed to wrap everyone around her little finger, and if you needed something that you couldn't buy yourself in town, she was the one to go to.

"I hope that pretty snake of yours appreciates your efforts," she added before sliding out of the room.

"I didn't say he's pretty!" Dean couldn't help but shout back at her, only to receive a laughed "Hon, you didn't have to. It's written all over your face!" in return.

Feeling his cheeks once again on fire, Dean shifted on his feet and stared down at the pot silently – and unhelpfully – resting in front of him: he didn't tell anyone about him and Cas being mates – not even to Sam and Jess – and he knew that Missouri was just teasing him, but it made him squirm with an inkling of anxious guilt anyway.

It wasn't like he didn't trust his brother with the news that he was...well, routinely getting some mytholon tail, it was just...some things were private. It wasn't anyone's business if his naga had two dicks or how convenient mentioned tail was for fucking.

"Hey, Winchester!" the sudden voice startled him into turning around towards the entrance door so quickly that he almost lost his balance, "Already back from your honeymoon?"

Ugh. Of course. It would have been too easy if he for once managed to gather all the things he needed and hike back to Cas before meeting that guy or one of his equally asshole friends.

"Gordon," the greeting came out dry and unimpressed.

Gordon Walker was – annoyingly enough – one of the expedition's guides, and, since Dean had come back from his little misadventure in the forest, the other had gone from a complete state of disinterest towards him to a weird alternation of relaxed friendliness and barely concealed disgust.

It was starting to give him mood whiplash with how often it happened.

"Your pet monster is going to think that someone's else got your attention if you leave him all on his own for too long," the other continued, stepping closer while his upper lip curled up in repulsion, dark eyes scanning him as if Gordon thought that he would find some kind of trace left behind by Castiel's hands on him if he looked hard enough.

Dean was aware that no-one was privy to the fact that the naga's fingers had not only touched him but also pretty much explored every part of his body by now, and still he had to exert all of his resolve to avoid reacting at the obvious taunt: Gordon most likely had no idea of how close to the mark he just hit, believing instead that his insinuations would offend him rather than make his stomach clench with nervousness.

"Aren't you supposed to be hunting for harpies?" Dean replied, rolling his eyes as dramatically as he was able to in order to make it obvious even to the other that his taunts weren't having the desired effect on him.

"Eh, they got someone else on the job since I took care of the last expedition," Gordon shrugged, dark gaze still boring holes in his face while the dark-skinned man studied him attentively. "Even guides need some days to rest once in a while: we can't all be as lucky as other people and earn our pay by passing time with our pets, right?"

Fuck this bullshit.

With a glare, Dean opened his mouth to tell the other just where he could shove his jealousy bouts – because fuck it! It was true he enjoyed his time with Cas but that didn't mean he didn't do his goddamn work and gathered as much information about nagas as his mate was comfortable providing – but his snarky replied was cut before it could even leave his mouth by a bag of flour and one of sugar unceremoniously plopped in his hands.

"There you go," in their back and forth between, both the man hadn't noticed when Missouri had stepped back in the room. The older woman didn't look particularly impressed by the exchange and, after giving Dean a last look, she turned her attention on the other cause of all that noise.

"Gordon, don't tell me: you 'accidentally lost your shovel' again," she commented, her eyebrow raising in disbelief when she received a shrug in return. "It's the third one in two weeks, what are you even doing with them?!"

Seeing his chance to escape, Dean gave a little wave at the woman, took the big pot still at his feet by the bail, and promptly left the building.

******

When Dean finally arrived at Cas' nest, he was – quite frankly – exhausted.

There was sweat trailing down the sides of his face, most of his hair was stuck to his skin, and his shirt was a soaked mess. His right arm hurt under the weight of the dutch oven Missouri had so graciously supplied him with, but it would all be worth every bit of trouble he had to endure when he would finally be able to make the naga an honest-to-God, homemade apple pie.

It was going to be awesome.

With a grunt of relief he let the heavy pot fall to the ground just inside the cave's entrance, soon followed by his backpack, and he took a deep breath while he pushed back the short strands of hair glued to his forehead. He was going to have to do something about the sweat – and the smell, really – later, but for now he could allow himself to at least drop his shirt on the ground and give himself a quick scrub at the nearby stream, the pleasantly cool water making him groan in appreciation when it touched the his overheated skin.

"Cas?" he called after splashing water on his face for a last time, "you home?"

Nope, apparently not, if the following silence was anything to go by.

Taking a glance outside, he noticed that the sun was starting to go down – the rays of light that usually managed to filter through the foliage vanishing one by one – so he guessed the naga must have gone out in search of food: Dean had told Cas before heading back to the exploration camp that he would come back today, so it didn't seem unlikely that the mytholon had decided to hunt something for their dinner – especially given his penchant for providing to Dean's every basic need.

He still probably had at least an hours before he was forced to either start a fire or finally give a purpose to the small electric lamp he brought with himself the last time he visited Cas: the naga's cave might be awesome in terms of refreshingly cool air and lack of insects, but there was also a consistent absence of light both in and outside of it once the sun had gone down that was kind of difficult to ignore.

There wasn't enough time to start making the pie he promised the mytholon now, even though the other's absence would have allowed for a bit of a surprised – besides, he _was_ pretty tired after hiking through the forest for half a day – but he could at least start to put the things he brought with himself in their proper shelf-holes.

He had just started to rummage inside his backpack when a sudden moan coming from deep inside the cave – farther down, where light never reached and it was difficult to see even in the brightest part of the day – followed by the familiar sound of scales shifting on gravel.

"Dean?" Castiel's voice came low and confused, making him frown in worry once he realized what he had just heard: had the naga been there the whole time? It wasn't like the mytholon to ignore – or be unaware of – anyone coming inside his home.

"Cas? You ok, dude?" Dean asked, squinting in an attempt to see what was going on at the closed end to the cave. The reply he received was a tired and muffled hiss, as if even speaking was too much effort at the moment for the naga, and then silence fell around them once again.

"Dude?" he repeated, not really expecting a reply but worrying nonetheless when no sound followed his prompting. Pulling his flashlight out of the bag still at his feet, he licked at his dried lips and then pointed it in the direction where the naga's voice had come from.

Well...that was definitely his tail – it was pretty difficult to mistake it for anything else – but it was bunched up in tight protective spirals wasn't a good sign at all. The mytholon only tended to do that when he was either angry or distressed: since he obviously wasn't the former, he must be feeling the latter. It also really didn't help Dean's slowly raising concern that Castiel's tail was all he could see of him at the moment: the naga's upper body must be buried somewhere under heaps and heaps of scales, like those dark coils were a giant, writhing shield against the rest of the world.

In a few quick steps Dean closed the distance between them and kneeled at the side of the slowly-shifting mound. From up close Cas' skin didn't look any good – granted, a flashlight wasn't the best when it came to distinguishing colors, but it still shouldn't make it appear so dull and gray instead of its usual deep black and blue hues.

"Fuck..." he breathed, feeling his heart hammer in his chest with worry. Was the naga injured? Was he sick? Dean could maybe do something if the mytholon was wounded somewhere, but he had no idea how to help him if the other had caught some kind of weird tropical illness.

"Hey, buddy...let me take a look at you?" he tried to coax his mate to shift his tail while he gently rubbed the closest coil. A sound of appreciation came from somewhere deep into the scaly mass, and then a tuft of black hair, soon followed by first an eyebrow and then dark lashes, peeked back at him.

"Dean..." the naga murmured his name again in a soft moan, like his presence was enough to make his suffering more bearable. Seemingly finding the will to move at last, the mytholon shifted out of his tail-y bunker and wrapped his arms around his mate's chest, burying his face against the crook of Dean's neck before the latter could take a good look at him. He managed to vaguely see that the worrying dull color had spread even to the scales on the naga's neck and cheeks, but in a few instants he was enveloped in the mytholon's hold without any chance to escape.

"Cas, hey..." Dean sank his nose in the side of Castiel's head, nuzzling gently in instinctive attempt to sooth the other's distress, "I'm here, you don't need to worry. Tell me what I can do to help and I'll do it."

"It's all right..." the naga's words came a bit more slurred than usual, like he was having difficulty focusing on how to pronounce a language that wasn't his own "...it's normal..."

"Cas, this is far from normal," with a frown the man tried to nudge the other's temple. "I mean your scales look all dull and colorle—JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" his eyes widened in a mix of disbelief and horror when the mytholon slowly turned to face him. "What the hell is _that_?!"

Feeling his throat go dry and his stomach clench at the sight in front of him, Dean stared at the glassy gaze that was trying, without much success, to focus on him: Castiel's irises had lost their usual bright hue, now appearing covered by an opaque blue-ish layer that extended over the visible part of his eyes, and even that little human skin that he had looked dangerously pale in comparison to it's usual healthy pink.

"Fuck," Dean cursed, realizing that there was no way the naga wasn't sick and, even worse, knowing that he had no way to properly help the other: he certainly had gained his fair amount of experience with the most common human diseases by taking care of his brother when they were younger, but how was he supposed to know what to do with the mytholon? If Sam were there maybe he would have an idea of what was going on, but Dean wasn't that smart, nor he took any fancy degree like his baby brother did.

"Shit," he quietly cursed for a second time before turning his tone gentle. "Cas, do you know what's wrong with you?" he asked, receiving a slow nod followed by a grunted "It's fine," that he promptly ignored: the naga was probably trying to reassure Dean out of his worried state of mind and, although he still appreciated the effort, the priority here was to aid his mate in every way he was able to.

"All right, what can I do to help?" he prompted while he let his hand trail up and down Castiel's back, noticing how much rougher than usual his scales felt under his fingertips.

"Hum...water..."

All right, water was easy, Dean could do water, there was plenty of water around there.

"...pond...feels too dry..." when that instruction reached his ears, the human nodded his understanding and shifted the other's weight in his hold, wrapping the closest arm around his shoulder to help the naga stay up.

"I hope you can move that tail of yours because there is no way I can carry all of you," Dean tried to joke but there wasn't much conviction in his words. His gaze kept darting to his friend's face every few instants, and he had started to nibble his lower lip in nervousness at some point without realizing it.

When they reached the large pool outside the cave, the mytholon let out a pleased hiss and slithered out of his hold to lay in the shallow waters. The human watched as the naga made sure that ever part of his tail was submerged, before finally settling on his back and closing his eyes.

"You feel better?" Dean asked quietly, kneeling so that Castiel's head could rest on his thighs. He ignored the water soaking his pants, all his attention focused on his mate, and he reached out to pull a few strands of hair from the other's forehead.

"Hum hum," it was a sound of assent, if not a particularly eloquent one, but it was clear by the naga's far more relaxed state that having his scales wet was helping somehow.

"You know what's up with you?" he let his thumb trail down the side of Cas' face, rubbing his cheek in a few slow circle before moving to caress his jaw.

"Hum hum," the mytholon repeated while he tilted his head further back in Dean's lap. "It's normal," he said once again, pink tongue flicking out to taste the air before darting back in his mouth.

"Can I do something to help?" in spite of his mate's apparent calm about whatever was wrong with him, Dean still couldn't get rid of the sense of worry that was still coursing through his body. "Do I need to get out that cinnamon oil of yours?"

"Nu-uh," the naga's mumbled reply was fallowed by a tired yawn, and then the mytholon was turning on his side as if he were thinking about taking a nap right there, with his body half-submerged in water.

"Cas, you can't sleep here: it's almost night and you're going to get a cold on top of whatever else is making you look like a zombie snake," Dean frowned, shaking the other's closest shoulder a bit. He received an annoyed grumble in return, but nothing more.

"You also need to eat," the human continued, "you can't go without food until you get better."

"Can't..." the mytholon let out a soft hiss, "...too tired...too much...after, maybe..."

"I'll make you something light," Dean was quick to promise, going back to rub his palm against the cool scales of Castiel's cheek: it was a bit of a sneaky move on his part – and the naga leaned into his warmth as predicted – but his priority was to help the other get better as soon as possible.

"...fine..." the naga conceded in the end, after a few long moments of appreciation for his mate's higher body temperature.

"Ok, good. You are going to stay here until I'm done?" Dean asked, only moving to carefully lay the other's head back on the web gravel once he received a short nod of confirmation. It bothered him to leave Cas like that in the open, even though he knew rationally that there was no danger so close to his nest, and he couldn't help treading his fingers through the mytholon's damp hair.

"I'll be right back."

It took him a bit of creative thinking to get everything ready, but in about half an hour he managed to pluck the feathers of a couple of those small gray birds that Cas kept hunting for him, gut them properly, get a small fire ready, and put everything into one of the camping pots he had brought with himself in one of his last visits.

During the whole procedure he kept sending glances at the naga to make sure that he wasn't in any immediate danger, taking note of the fact that the mytholon hadn't moved an inch from how Dean left him: he must be seriously taking a nap in spite of half of his body being covered in lukewarm water.

When he could finally leave the pot to simmer on its own, he took a few steps towards the other with the intention of going back to try and give him some comfort, before stopping in his tracks. The mechanical nature of cooking and the well-known step he had to follow had somewhat cooled his mind and, now that his brain was no longer completely overtaken by worry for the mytholon, he realized that there was something else he could do to find out what was going on with his friend.

Quickly he ran back into the cave, fished his cellphone out of his backpack, and then he made his way outside while he punched in his brother's number: Sam might not know anything specifically about naga, but he and Jess still were the most knowledgeable people Dean knew when it came down to mytholons in general.

"Dean, hey," his brother's cheery voice reached him after the third ring, "you got to Cas safely?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," the older Winchester replied while he sent the umpteenth glance in his mate's direction: nope, he still hadn't moved at all, not even to turn on his side.

"Listen, I don't have much time, there is this thing with Cas and I don't know what..." he stopped, his heart was hammering in his chest once again, and his head felt light and fuzzy. He knew that he must have not be making much sense, so he tried again after a few instants of hesitation, "I think he's sick and I can't...I have no idea what to do to help..."

"Woah, ok. First of all, take a deep breath: you sound like you're about to have a heart attack," Sam's voice turned serious and only when Dean followed his instruction, he continued. "Now tell me exactly what's going on."

After silently listening to the older Winchester's explanation, of how he had found Cas all wrapped up in a cocoon of his own coils and how not only the naga's scales looked gray and dead, but he was so tired that he barely moved without prompting, Sam asked a few more questions to make sure he was getting the situation right.

"You said he's soaking in the pond now, right?" he asked, words coming out careful and slow like half of his mind was still busy pondering about the situation, "Could he be just dehydrated?"

"Dude, he got a freaking stream running _inside_ his nest," Dean replied, his tone coming out a bit more sharply than he intended, "if the guy needed to drink he could just slither half-a-feet to his right and get what he wanted."

"Yeah, ok, but there are some snakes that sometimes get this weird—" the older man never knew what his brother was about to say because he now could hear Jess's voice in the background and the two of them had started talking animately about something that he couldn't quite make out.

"Dean, you still there?" when his future sister-in-law was the one to continue the conversation, he wasn't even completely surprised.

"Yeah, yeah I'm here. What is it, Jess?"

"Well, just to make sure," she started, "aside from wanting to humm...take a bath, Cas didn't ask for anything else, right?"

"No," Dean frowned, instinctively sending a quick glance in the direction of the naga. Wait, had the mytholon actually slipped further inside the water? He could still see his mouth and nose peeking out of the surface, but now even most of his face was submerged. What the hell...?

"He insists it's normal, but he's tired as fuck, and he kind of slurs when he talks, and I had to insist that he should eat something because apparently he thought it was a good idea to wait whatever he has out."

"Ah," Jess really didn't sound as worried as Dean believed she should be, given the emergency at hand. He waited for her to continue, but after a few instants of silence, he realized that she must be debating the situation with his brother again.

He was beginning to feel a bit left out considering that it was Dean's mate's wellbeing they were disserting on – not that they knew _that_ , but he was still the one closest to the naga among the three of them.

"Listen," suddenly Jessica's attention was turned back on him, "I'm not sure he's actually sick, I think you should wait it out for a couple of days like he said, and see if he gets better on his own," she said and, even before she finished with her statement, Dean was already getting ready to reply that no, this looked definitely a sickness of some sort, but she didn't let him enough time to speak. "We'll still take a look to see if we can find out for sure what's going on with him, but I think you should trust Castiel's judgement on this one: he knows how his body works far better than any of us do."

He didn't like how reasonable she made it sound and he wished he were still speaking with his brother. Sam would have left him fret about the naga's wellbeing as much as he wanted, but he supposed Jess was right: it was true that Cas didn't seem alarmed in the least with what was going on with his body, and that, aside from his scales and eyes looking all weird, he really hadn't shown any other symptom of illness like fever, coughing or sweating.

"Fine," he reluctantly acquiesced, "but I'm still gonna get something into his stomach even if I've to force-feed him," he added more gruffily. He received a laugh for his efforts, but she seemed pleased with his reply.

"Good, now go spoil your scaly friend, you big mother hen!" he could hear her grin even through the receiver and he couldn't help shaking his head in amusement in spite of her – completely unwarranted! – accusations towards his clearly masculine persona.

"Ok, I'll call you again tomorrow to see if you've found something then," he hummed. "Bye!"

"Bye, bye! And don't fret too much! It's not good for your heart!" and with a last laugh she hanged.

Well, all right, being calm. He could do calm if he wanted to...

Absently threading his hand through his hair, he pocketed his phone, and went to check how dinner was doing. The soup looked thick enough and, when he took a spoonful in his mouth, it tasted good enough considering it came from the wild cousins of pigeons, so he put the fire out with the gravel that abounded around Castiel's nest, and moved to get the naga to get his pretty tail out of the water.

"Hey, Cas, dinner's ready," he called when only a few steps separated them. The mytholon grunted something that Dean was pretty sure was some form of annoyed curse – judging by the tone – and his tongue darted out to taste the air while his eyes slowly opened. The human licked his lips, still finding the opaque gray-blue covering them unnerving, but he ignored the feeling of worry valiantly trying to catch his attention again in favor of kneeling to help the naga stand.

When his fingers touched the other's cool skin, the naga let out a pleased sigh and grudgingly let Dean wrap one of his arms around the mytholon's waist to pull him up.

"You're dripping everywhere," Dean grunted, while mentally thanking the fact that he yet had to put another shirt on: if there was something he had learned by living on and off with the naga, was that there were never enough clean shirts in the forest. Never.

"I don't care," Castiel bluntly replied, squeezing closer to his mate in order to take advantage of his natural warmth. "You are the one that insisted I should eat, so it's all your fault."

The naga sounded much more coherent now, and Dean was very grateful for it, but the human had no idea what to think about the other's newfound grumpy streak. It was...kind of adorable actually. Especially the way it turned Cas' lips into a pout and made his nose scrunch up in annoyance.

"It'll do you good," he replied, helping the other get comfortable next to the remnants of the fire. The naga's tail ended up laying in a loose semi-circle around the ashes to take advantage of the warmth that they still emanated, while Castiel's side remained pressed against Dean's own, head tilted to lay on his mate's shoulder.

"I'm gonna have to spoon-feed you, hum?" the human chuckled, noticing the way the mytholon's eyes were starting to droop again.

"Maybe," Castiel, a small grin bending the corner of his lips. His tongue briefly darted out again and Dean couldn't help leaning in to kiss the mytholon's forehead, before moving the naga around so that the other was laying between his leg.

"Hey, can you actually see anything with that gray thing on your eyes?" he asked while he filled a bowl with their dinner. He had noticed how the naga seemed to be flicking his tongue more than usual and, remembering his brother mentioning something about the fact that snakes' sense of taste was far sharper than their sight, he wondered how blind Cas was at the moment to instinctively compensate for it like that.

"Hum, sort of?" the naga frowned, "I see shapes and not much more, but I still have my tongue and my..." he paused, letting out a frustrated hiss before pointing at the two small pits just below his nose. "I still can see warm things with them when they come closer and judging by the size I can make a guess if they are enemies or not."

"That kind of suck," Dean commented while he scooped up a spoonful of soup and held it in front of the other's mouth. He didn't like in the slightest the idea of the naga being even partially defenseless: it was a good thing he had come back to visit when he did.

"It's all right, I usually wait it out in my nest," Castiel replied, as if feeling his mate's distress, and taking the bite he was being offered. "Warm..." he hummed with appreciation in spite of the fact that he usually refused the food cooked by Dean on principle: he still wasn't completely convinced by this weird human practice of burning every prey they caught.

He wasn't, however, likely to hunt anything for himself anytime soon, and, when his mate offered him another spoonful, he accepted it gratefully.

"So it _is_ normal." Dean frowned in the meantime, taking a bite for himself before going back to feeding his groggy mate.

"I told you so already. It usually happens once or twice per season," Castiel confirmed, "I believe snakes go through it as well. I've seen the signs they leave behind but never witnessed it firsthand: they hide in their nests like we do."

Well, that was marginally reassuring: at least now he knew that if anything turned for the worse he always had the option to ask the opinion of a reptile specialist or something.

"And you should get better on your own?" he asked, offering another spoonful to the naga comfortably nestled against his chest.

"It lasts a few days, but yes, there is no need to worry," the mytholon reasserted, waving his mate's hand away in a sign that he was done for now, "I usually don't really eat anything during it and I'm still fine once it passes. I tried to eat a bird once, when I was younger, but I felt horrible afterwards and it came right back up..."

"You feeling sick now?" the human couldn't help but ask, now a bit worried for forcing the other to eat against his protests. It didn't seem like Cas was anywhere near throwing up – and really, it had only been half a bowl of soup – but Dean felt slightly guilty about the whole thing nonetheless.

"No," the naga shook his head only to let out a slow yawn, "but I _am_ tired."

"All right then," Dean nodded, cleaning up the bowl of whatever soup was left in it, and helping the other back on his tail. Once he made sure that the naga was comfortably curled up on the tiger pelt they slept on at night, he quickly made sure once again that the fire was completely put out and brought the pot with was was left of their dinner inside, setting it in the far back of the cave where the air was cooler.

By the time he finished and went back to Cas, the mytholon had resumed his turtle-in-a-shell-of-tail performance once again. His scales looked marginally better – at least they felt less dry to the touch – but they were still missing their usual slick sheen, Dean noticed when he knelt next to him.

"You're going to end up smothered by your tail if you stay like that the whole night," he commented, reaching out to move aside the closest coil in an attempt to find his mate's face somewhere underneath all that black and blue skin. He was so focused on his task that when he felt the other's fingers brush against his thigh, he jumped and let out a strangled sound of surprise.

"Jesus, Cas! Don't do that!" he hissed, studying with curiosity the hand that was patting around as if in search of something.

It took several instants of blind attempts at finding whatever it was that Cas was searching for, before the naga apparently gave up, letting out an annoyed sound of frustration while he shifted his tail away to pull himself up. His eyes were pointed at Dean and, in spite of the blurry film covering them, the human had no doubt that he was being targeted like a prey sniffed out by a hunting wolf.

When Castiel suddenly springed forward, like some kind of giant wind-up toy, an outraged exclamation of surprise left the human, and in less than a few instants Dean found himself tightly squeezed against the the other's chest, a pair of strong arms securely wrapped around his back, blocking any chance of escape from his capturer's hold.

They were both flat on the pelt, the mytholon on his back while Dean laid on him, and Cas' tail was doing its damn best at covering the both of them as much as possible. The human could feel the cool scales looping around his legs and sliding up his naked back until only his arms remained free from any constriction.

After a few fruitless attempts at squirming away from the other's hold, Dean had to gave up to the reality that he was stuck there until the naga decided to release him.

"If you wanted to use me as bed warmer _again_ , you could have asked, you know?" he huffed in the end, laying his cheek against Castiel's chest while the mytholon nuzzled his hair lazily, "It's not like I would have refused..."

"I missed you...and you were taking too long..." the naga gave as a justification, chapped lips pressing on Dean's forehead once before the other sank his face back in his mate's hair.

"You missed my body's warmth," the human snorted in return, tilting his head up to stare at a pair of amused blue eyes.

"Maybe," Castiel conceded.

******

The days that followed were much the same: the naga was sleepy most of the time, cranky when he was forced to move, and still refused to eat unless Dean insisted he should at least have a few spoonful of soup. His scales still looked dull and dried far more quickly than usual, and his eyes were still covered by that unnerving gray layer.

Then, on the fourth morning, Dean woke up to find that Castiel was no-where in sight. He thought that the other might have curled up again at the closed end of the cave, but a quick check confirmed to him that, after half a week of self-imposed secludedness, his mate had indeed finally ventured out of the cave on his own volition.

"Hey, Cas, you aroun—?" he started to call while he stepped outside, eyes squinting against the late morning light, and then suddenly something caught on in his feet, making him tumble down with an undignified shout of surprise.

"What the hell?!" he tried to stand again, only to find that his right foot was wrapped in a...he wasn't entirely sure _what_ it was, truth be told. It kind of looked like a plastic bag, except it wasn't as much a bag as it was an empty, deflated tube that went on and on for who knew how long, and that was marred by flaky bits coming off its surface like it had been dried under the sun for days.

"What the fuck...?" how did that garbage even get there?

With an annoyed grunt he shook that thing off his ankle and, once back on his feet, he took a look around. It only took him a few moments to notice Castiel, comfortably curled up on a wide flat rock at about twenty feet from him, while he soaked the warm rays of the midmorning sun like he was a sunflower in dire need of light.

"Hey, you," once closed the distance between them, Dean couldn't help but notice with relief how today his mate's scales seemed to look far healthier and richer in colors. His tail looked slick and shiny as if it had been recently oiled, and even the gray film on Cas' eyes had receded to leave behind the bright blue gaze that the human was used to see on the other's face.

With a grin spreading on his lips, Dean bent down to place a quick kiss on his mouth. "You look good today," he commented with appreciation when a strong arm wrapped around his waist to pull him down to sit in a nest of coils and scales.

Yes, they definitely looked better and felt far less dry under his fingers.

"The renewal process was more demanding than usual this time, but I'm fine now." the naga hummed, letting one of his hands trail down the closest coils with approval.

"Good," Dean nodded, happy to see that his mate was back to his usual, more relaxed self, even though he had the weird impression he was missing something from the other's words.

Uh...?

"Wait a minute..." sending a glance back at the thing that had wrapped around his foot and was still piled up in front of the cave, the human couldn't help but gape in realization, "Are you telling me that that's your..."

"My old skin, yes," when the naga confirmed his suspicion, Dean winced in disgust: that was...ok, he didn't usually have anything against snakes' shedding leftovers, but these were forty-five feet of dead scales and...no, just no.

"That's...that's just gross," he groaned, shaking his head to remove the image of Castiel bursting out of his old skin like some kind of freaky alien from his brain.

"Humans peel off bit by bit," the naga retorted, sounding unimpressed by his comment, "I find it far more disgusting," which, fine, was a completely fair reply, but still...

"What do you even do with the old skin?" Dean asked, sending another glance at the source of his distress: did Cas just drop it in the middle of the forest or something? It wasn't like the rain wouldn't wash it away anyway at some point...

"I usually just throw it in the pond," the mytholon shrugged, looking completely unconcerned about the fact that Dean had took advantage of that pond. Quite often, in fact. _Dean had been in that pond while there were dead skins at its bottom!_

What the hell!

Glaring at his mate for withholding that essential piece of information, he grumbled, "I'm never going to swim in there again."


	4. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was completely unplanned (but actually kind of necessary to be brought up at some point, so it's ok).
> 
> Triggers (they are very much needed in this one) are at the end of the chapter.

There were a lot of things that Dean liked about his mate's nest: he liked the fact that it was pleasantly cool near the back and relaxingly warm near the entrance; he liked the fact that there was a lot of space to set up all kind of things he brought to Cas; and most of all, he liked that, if the other was around, there was always at least part of his tail in Dean's immediate vicinity.

What he didn't like were the sudden and unpredictable downpours that forced him to stay inside when he planned to take a walk with his naga.

"Dean, you're squirming," Castiel commented, sending him a glance out of the corner of his eye.

The mytholon was laying near the entrance of his home, chest flat against the gravel and tail curling in lazy loops behind him, while he watched the rain fall with a dazed look on his face. It was a position that Dean had seen him assume before – with the bottom of his chin against the ground and staring right in front of him, neck straight in a way that would become painful for a human if they were to keep it for too long – and, after inquiring about it, Castiel explained that it made distant sounds more clear to hear. It was something about the sound coming from the earth, through his throat, and directly into his inner ear, which he sort of understood but wasn't quite able to imagine since he lacked firsthand experience of anything like that.

Although he had to admit it was easy to see how convenient such an ability would be for someone living in the wild.

Nuzzling against the naga's nape, he squirmed a bit to alleviate the feeling of pins and needles that had slowly spread through his legs during his musing: since the sky decided to drop down bucket after bucket of water and Castiel decided to occupy his time by rain-watching, Dean had been laying on the other's back, knowing that his weight was negligible to the other's inhuman strength. In fact, the naga became quite vocal in expressing his displeasure every time that Dean removed himself from his role of self-heating blanket for whatever reason.

"You getting sleepy, Cas?" he asked when the mytholon opened his mouth in a silent yawn, tongue briefly darting out to taste the air before flicking back inside of it. It was kind of adorable how, every time it rained, Castiel entered a state of lazy lethargy that made him not only even more prone to touch than usual, but downright clingy and demanding at times.

It was the only positive thing about that forest's eternally-moody weather.

"Hum-hum," was the tired confirmation that he received before the other's eyes closed, letting out a soft sigh of relaxation.

"You gonna fall asleep on me?" the human chuckled, running his fingers in the mess that was the naga's hair, making it stick at sharp angles even more than usual.

"No..." the mytholon's voice was soft, betraying the state of contentment he had fallen in, "you are going back in a few days: it would be a waste..."

"Wanna watch something to wake you up?" Dean asked, still treading his fingers through the other's dark locks.

At some point after his third or fourth visit to the naga's nest, Sam had managed to scavenge a laptop for him after the older Winchester had vehemently expressed his annoyance at the utter lack of things to do when Castiel was sleeping or out hunting. The old thing was a monster that weighted a ton and needed the passage of two ice-ages to fully charge with the solar charger, but at least it allowed Dean to introduce the mytholon to the pleasures that the big screen had to offer.

The first attempts at their makeshift movie nights had been...interesting, the naga forgetting at times that he wasn't watching something that actually happened and almost constantly complaining about humans general lack of survival instinct, but by now Castiel knew to at least keep any comment he might want to express for after the movie ended.

"Yes," the mytholon agreed, shifting under Dean until the latter caught the hint and jumped back on his feet.

It took them only a few minutes to get themselves in place, having found out already that they were the most comfortable when Cas sat propped up against one of the cave's walls and Dean straddled his lap, back against the mytholon's chest and head resting against his shoulder, the laptop safely balanced on his thighs.

The battery was almost dead again – which didn't really surprise the human – but it would last enough for what they needed.

"All right, got anything in mind you want to watch?" Dean asked once he felt the other's arm wrap around his middle, hands ending up resting on his stomach.

"Whatever you like," Castiel replied against the back of his ear, breath tickling its sensitive skin before adding, "perhaps something we haven't seen yet?"

"Something new it is then!" the human concurred, scrolling down the list of absolutely-legally-downloaded files while he considered his options: he tried to introduce the naga to the classics before, but the mytholon showed no interest in sci-fi of any kind – finding it utterly confusing at the best of times and downright unrealistic at the worst – while action movies tended to send him in this short ranting bouts about how a certain characters could have done things much more efficiently and effortlessly than what was shown on the screen, that were undoubtedly adorable but also ended up with Castiel being more frustrated than satisfied by the time the credits started to roll.

This left him with the Ensemble Dark Horse to choose from.

At some point Sam had pointed out that what probably was keeping the naga from fully enjoying any movie that the older Winchester proposed him, was the fact that Dean kept showing him films whose setting wasn't immediately recognizable for Cas: the mytholon had to struggle not only to understand what was going on in a language that wasn't his own, but he also lacked knowledge on things that to a human would be obvious: how was he supposed to know what a bus was or what kind of damage a bomb could do if he had never seen or heard of either of them?

That discussion had been, truth be told, kind of illuminating, and made Dean finally realize what genre of movies he should have bet on from the beginning: monster movies. Specifically of the very-bad variety.

Castiel was a mytholon after all – if there was something he could instinctively understand, it was supernatural and dangerous creatures – and sticking with the kind of movies that implied cheap CGI effects usually came with a plot and dialogues linear enough for the naga to understand them with only a bit of trouble: even if he missed details, there still was no way to misinterpret "giant-ass monster trying to flatten a city".

"Let's try this one," he hummed, clicking on the first title that caught his attention: movies of the "monster X vs monster Y" variety were usually the kind of bad that Dean was going for, and the fact that it implied the featuring of some kind of giant python seemed to be even more of a reason to choose it.

When snakes appeared on screen, Cas had the tendency to hiss back at them in an instinctive attempt to communicate with them. While they didn't have a real language like nagas did, the mytholon usually translated the general meaning for Dean with the most hilarious results – one time, when the human was still trying to convert him to the wonders of Indiana Jones by making him watch "Raiders of the Lost Ark", Castiel went on a tirade on how the slithering reptiles in the snake pit, while very annoyed at all the noise, had no intention of attacking anyone whatsoever, and were much more focused in complaining about how they wanted to finally go back to sleep.

From previous experience, he thought that the movie they were about to watch would go much in the same way.

It became however soon evident to him that perhaps he should stop forgetting that Cas didn't react like a normal human being. From the very beginning, the setting of the film made him restless – and Dean couldn't really blame him, not with several pythons kept in glass cages in what he sincerely hoped was not some kind of laboratory – but he seemed to relax again when the animal activists managed to steal them and let them go into a nearby lake.

When the following scene with the first giant snake of the movie attacked a hunter only to be shot down, the naga hissed once again in displeasure, letting out a frustrated "It had all the rights to attack; the human was invading its territory!", quieting down again in a discontent silence only when Dean tangled their fingers on his belly and squeezed their hands together.

By the time they got to the eggs scene, Dean realized he made a huge mistake: when the first shot was fired, he felt the naga jump under him, his body tensing more and more with each white shell that was blown in a mess of thick red liquid and his arms wrapping around his mate in an almost painful hold, like that was the only thing keeping him from bolting at the sight before him.

When the last one of the unborn snakes was killed, Cas let out a sound of distress that Dean had never heard him make before, and the mytholon only resisted a handful of seconds before sinking his face against the human's nape in an obvious attempt to banish the scene playing in front of him from his mind.

Dean slammed the laptop closed.

Fuck dammit, he messed up again!

"Cas? Cas, you ok?" he warily asked while he put the laptop aside to turn in the other's hold. The only answer he received was a set of strong arms once again wrapping around his chest, the naga still refusing to look him in the eyes.

"Shit..." Dean couldn't help but curse, shuffling closer to let the mytholon's forehead rest against his shoulder, "Cas, hey...you don't need to take it so seriously. It's just a dumb movie: I already explained to you that they aren't real, remember? No-one actually killed anyone..."

Another pained sound reached him while Castiel warely shook his head, his tail tensing around them in tight loops that Dean by now knew to recognize as a sign of distress from the other.

"...but you do," he replied, "Your people do. They invade our territory and they hunt us down. My older brothers used to tell me that before I was born the forest was only ours to inhabit, that your kin knew to stay outside of it and gave us no trouble," his voice was a quiet but Dean could feel his shoulders shake lightly while he talked, "The forest was our place to catch prey, and you took the flat plains and tall mountains of the far north. We were all content like that, we both survived and only met each other in rare occasions at best."

"Then you started to search for us, to kill us either out of fear or to take our tails for yourselves," the naga continued, taking a shuddering breath that prompted Dean to squeeze him closer against his chest in a gesture of comfort.

"You took many of us, destroyed out clutches, and now our nests are few and far between: we used to be able to enter one another's territories by accident, but now we have to travel for days and days before finding others of our kind unless we already know where they live."

"I'm sorry," Dean whispered against Cas' hair, rubbing his back in slow circles. He still forgot at times that, until he stumbled upon him, nagas were believed to have gone extinct, the last recorded sighting of one being dated almost a century before: that had to say something about just how few of them were still left in the Eastern Rainforest.

"My parents were fortunate: their nest was hidden enough that both the clutches they had escaped being destroyed." Castiel added while his tail slowly wrapped around Dean's right leg, "If you don't consider my disadventure when I was younger, my siblings and I never really encountered much danger – there were a few times when my brothers saw your hunters pass by, but they never seemed to notice us."

The naga finally raised his head, blue eyes peering back into green ones with a kind of sad acceptance that made Dean's stomach clench in sympathy: it was the kind of look of someone that didn't know when their next relative or friend was going to die.

"You have to understand: nagas usually don't stay with their hatchlings after they are old enough to fend for themselves, and yet both my parents understood the danger that your people had become to us and waited for their first clutch to grow old enough to take care of the second one before leaving our old nest," Cas continued to explain, "I never met them, as my egg was one of the last to hatch, but my eldest brothers taught me that we should always stay away from humans if possible. You're a threat and we should avoid you."

"And you saved me anyway..." Dean murmured, eyes slowly widening at that realization.

"And I saved you anyway..." the naga confirmed, a shy smile playing on his lips while his mate's face filled with wonder, "You were hurt and in pain: you couldn't possibly be of any danger to me. I made sure you weren't armed – I know how your weapons work, I've seen them used by your hunters while hiding on trees – and decided to help you."

"Why?" the human couldn't help but ask. Why would the other rescue him when everything that he had been told about humans were warning tales about their ruthlessness in hunting nagas?

"One of you aided me once – I told you of this before – I thought I would reciprocate the favor," Castiel replied, his eyes lighting up in the delighted way they did every time he mentioned his past savior. Dean's lips quirked upwards at the look on his face and, unable to resist the temptation, he leaned in to press a kiss against his mouth.

"I really need to send that Jimmy-guy a thank-you postcard or something," he chuckled afterwards, receiving an indulgent glance in return.

The naga seemed much more relaxed now, his features having softened with affection while he stared back at his human mate, and his relentless hold on Dean having toned down to a more gentle embrace.

It made his chest swell with a warm feeling he wasn't quite sure he was ready to examine in details just yet.

"My mother died in a fire when I was four," he found himself admitting, his voice lowering in a quiet murmur, "My brother was just a baby back then and I don't think he remembers any of it, but a guy broke in our home one night while me and Mom were settling him in the crib and demanded he was given Sammy."

He closed his eyes, remembering a tall dark figure shifting out the shadows in the room and speaking to his mother in a soft by somehow still unsettling voice. His back was turned to the window making it impossible for Dean to properly see his face, but the memory of emotionless eyes peering back at them like they were small ants in the path of a hunting lion still made a shiver of uneasiness run up his spine: in the soft light of the lamp that Mary still had to switch off, they had appeared yellow and cold, like gold.

What happened next was a jumble of short flashes, the heat of flames quickly spreading up the room's walls, and the sensation of constant panic while he ran down the stairs, his father having appeared at some point to place Sam in his arms and tell him to ran outside and take care of him.

John tried to go back inside to help Mary, but he didn't made it in time.

"Apparently the guy was called Azazel and that wasn't the first time he did something like that: he was known for stealing the babies of newlyweds and setting their houses on fire with the parents still inside, but they never managed to catch him," he continued with a sigh, opening his eyes again to meet Castiel's blue ones peering back at him with a mixture of sadness and worry.

The naga's tail had been slowly sneaking up his back while he talked, the thinner end of it wrapping around his neck once it reached his shoulders and squeezing it gently in a sign of solidarity. It made him let out a soft breath of relief and his mind buzz pleasantly in a way that he wasn't entirely sure how to interpret: the silent protectiveness in that simple gesture calmed him in ways that few other things could.

"My mother didn't...s-she didn't made it," he continued with only a moment of hesitation. "My Dad was a mess afterwards and became obsessed with catching the guy. He was convinced that Azazel was some kind of demon, but demons aren't really...I mean, you guys exist and we see you and you are kind of hard to miss, but there really isn't any proof that demons are a thing."

"They aren't, not that I'm aware of..." Cas confirmed and Dean nodded in understanding.

"Yeah, Sam said pretty much the same thing when he started getting interested in mytholons, that sometimes old sources call you 'demons' because when they were written no-one really made much distinction on the things that go bumping in the night, and that even now a lot of people don't really know how to distinguish the less common ones that are still around," he sighed, absently rubbing at the tail still wrapped around his neck.

"Even when Sammy brought up all the articles he found on the matter, Dad wouldn't listen: he said he couldn't trust the words of 'self-proclaimed scientists' and that he wouldn't give up until he found the demon that killed our mother. He just...he just couldn't give up on the idea that he should avenge her, even if it meant that Sammy was going to have a shitty childhood and..." his voice faltered and he closed his eyes.

That wasn't a particularly happy period of his life, and remembering it always made him feel as powerless as he had felt when – still only eight – his father first told him that he couldn't be of any help, that he should be a good kid and take care of his brother instead of trying to undermine his authority.

"Dean..." Cas' quiet voice filtered through that gloomy memory while his hands came to rest on Dean's cheeks, rubbing them in calming circles until the human felt his shoulders slump in surrender and his body slowly slide down to rest against the naga's chest.

He tucked his face against the cool scales of the other's neck and took a deep breath, "There were times he would go missing for weeks, leaving me and Sammy on our own. Sometimes he gave us enough money to survive but sometimes...sometimes he stayed away more than he said he would," one of Castiel's hands was now cradling his head, long fingers treading through his hair, "I had to get creative to scrounge up enough money to keep Sammy fed and clothed, to keep a roof over our head even if it was from a shitty motel in the middle of no-where."

Even if more than a decade had passed since that time, Dean still remembered clearly the feeling of hunger that came with sacrificing his own meal in order to allow his brother to eat regularly, or the times he was beaten because he wasn't swift enough at stealing some peanut butter and bread from the local store.

He didn't regret all the hardship he endured to make sure that Sammy had as much of a decent childhood as he could – no way in hell! – but sometimes it was difficult not to feel bitter towards their father's selfish desire for revenge and his ability to see that he still had two kids to care about.

"After I turned fifteen, Dad finally pissed one too many people off and he was found dead in a ditch, leaving me and Sammy with only each other. If it weren't for Bobby – one of Dad's old friends and kind of an unofficial uncle to us – I don't know what we would have done."

The fingers in his hair hesitated for an instant before going back to their gentle and hypnotic motions, their tips circling his ear before brushing lightly the side of his beck and then moving back up to trail through his short locks.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," the naga murmured, lips pressing against Dean's forehead while he squeezed the human a bit tighter against his chest. "You're an exceptional being, not many would have gone to the extents you did for your brother."

"Yeah, right," Dean couldn't help but snort at the praise: if he were truly exceptional he would have found a way to allow Sam to go to the same school for more than a few months in a row; if he were truly exceptional he wouldn't have needed to drop their bullshit on Bobby and he would have been able to take care of his brother on his own; if he truly were exceptional he would have found a way to make John see that his kids needed him and he needed to get a fucking grip on himself.

"You took care of Sam since you were a hatchling," he didn't need to look at the mytholon to know that Cas was frowning in disapproval at his tone, "His achievements might be his own, but if it weren't for you sacrificing yourself for him, he wouldn't have had the chance to pursue them."

The naga's hand shifted from his hair to cupping his jaw, making him tilt his head up so that their eyes could meet. There was so much conviction in Castiel's gaze that it made Dean's chest clench and his throat feel like something was stuck in it.

"You _are_ exceptional, Dean," he repeated, the corner of his eyes softening with affection, "I couldn't ask for a better mate than you."

Not wanting to know what would come out of his mouth if he tried to speak now, Dean closed the distance between them and kissed him. He kissed him like he was drowning and Castiel's lips were the only thing keeping him from taking another breath of air, dragging a startled sound out of the naga that allowed him to sink his tongue between them.

That stupid, stupid, wonderful idiot couldn't say stuff like that!

How was he supposed to deal with those kind of confessions?

How was he supposed to find a reply when they sounded an awful lot like a whole other kind of declaration?

"Fuck me," he demanded when their mouths finally parted, his breath coming out in quick pants against the other's lips. He pressed their bodies together, grinding his half-hard dick against the other's belly to let him know what his intentions were.

The naga was still watching him with wide confused eyes, but Dean didn't care: there was too much going on in his head, simply too much. He was not built to deal with emotions of any kind, much less whatever _this_ was that was trying to make his heart burst out of his chest – that was how hard it was beating because of Castiel's words.

What he did know was how to fuck.

Hell, he was a god at fucking!

His skills in that regards were one of the few things he could find no fault with, so, before the mytholon could recover completely from the state of surprise he was still in, Dean latched his lips on Castiel's neck, sucking and biting while he made his way down the thinner scales on the other's chest.

He managed to arrive at the height where his mate's navel would have been if he were human, before one of the naga's hand reached under his left armpit and pulled him back up.

"Dean, no, stop," Cas sounded still confused, but some worry was beginning to filter there and fuck, if he was getting sidetracked _now_ then Dean was doing an awful job at getting the other to fuck his brains out.

"No," he stubbornly refused, trying to free himself from the other's hold and continue with what he had started.

"Dean, I said _stop_ ," the naga repeated, voice sharp and filled with purpose.

"Why?!" the human shout back, head snapping up to let him fix an angry glare into the other's resolute gaze.

"Because you're still hurting," Cas answered, his tone becoming more gentle while his eyes filled again with the kind of affection that Dean was sure – _sure_ – he didn't deserve to have directed at him ever in his life.

A frustrated sound, almost like a pained growl left him, "That's the best way I know to make it stop!"

Because sex was easy, and made everything feel good, and let his head fall into buzzing and blessed oblivion for just enough time to let the walls inside his mind recover and grow stronger than ever before...

"Then teach me how to make pie," the naga demanded, gaze serious and unyielding even while the human opened his mouth to reply, closed it in disbelief, and then tried again.

"What...?" the human whispered, all the fight deflating from him at that unexpected request from his mate.

"You said before that pie makes you happy, right?" Cas slowly started, continuing only when he received a weak nod of confirmation, "So teach me: I'll make it for you."

Dean couldn't help it: he laughed.

He laughed and laughed and laughed, until his eyes started to swell up and tears began to trickled down his cheeks, deep sobs bubbling from his chest and his nose dripping in a gross mess that he was barely able to keep in check.

He didn't care.

"Ok, sure," he conceded in the end, his lips having quirked up at some point without him realizing it, "I can teach you that."

******

As predicted the weird hard-shelled fruits that grew around there were just perfect to make pie-filling.

Castiel loved it and ended up eating three whole pieces all on his own.

Dean, for once, didn't mind to share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Triggers:**  
>  \- Mentions of genocide.  
> \- Mentions of past child abuse and neglect.
> 
> By the way, for anyone wondering, the movie that Cas and Dean were watching is [this one right here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Python_vs._Gatoroid).


	5. Communication

"I said no," Dean frowned at his brother, his head tilting up to stare with open contempt at the younger man next to him, while he pressed a cotton ball against the puncture on his inner elbow. He was sitting on a chair inside the camp's infirmary, having been called in for the periodical check-up that all members of the expedition had to submit to, and for the best part of of his stay there, his brother had been nagging him almost non-stop.

"It's been almost two months since you found Cas," Dean knew the tone Sam was using, it was the one that usually forewent his infamous puppy-dog eyes. Normally they would be able to make anyone do anything, but he had already braced himself against them and wasn't going to be swayed so easily this time around.

"I want to talk to him in person too."

It wasn't knew for the younger Winchester to request a meeting with the naga, and Dean _did_ mention as much to the mytholon himself in more than one occasion, but the result had always been the same.

"I asked him already: he said he doesn't feel comfortable talking with anyone but me," he grimaced, already knowing how that whole conversation was going to end: Sam might be sensitive and a real girl at times, but he became so freaking stubborn when he got an idea into his head, that he tended to disregard any other opinion on the matter.

Normally the older Winchester would indulge his brother – he liked to spoil him as much as possible given the kind of shitty childhood they both had – but this was about Cas.

Cas, who was a naga and whose entire species was almost driven to extinction by humans.

He might have conveniently forgotten to tell his brother about that little piece of information – it wasn't anyone's business, really – so Sam could maybe be kind of justified in his insistences, but there was still no way that Dean was going disregard Cas' wishes on the matter.

"Did you tell him I had no problem meeting him elsewhere? That I didn't have to go to his nest for it?" at the beginning Sam had thought that it was a matter of the naga not wanting to expose his home's location to potential enemies, but once Dean asked Cas about it, the mytholon explained that wasn't really the main issue – although it was part of the problem.

"Yeah, I did," Dean groaned, hopping back on his feet when the nurse gestured that he was done and could leave, "and he still said he wouldn't feel comfortable dealing with any other member of the expedition but me."

Truth be told, the older Winchester kind of liked how he was the exception to every conviction that the naga had about humans, it made him feel pleasantly warm in his chest. When he had asked the mytholon about it, Cas had stared at him with bafflement – as if he were wondering why Dean even had to ask such a question – and replied that "Dean is Dean, of course you're not going to harm me."

"Ok, but have you tried to—"

"For fuck's sake, Sammy!" he finally snapped, that sweet memory rudely interrupted by his brother's attempt to further champion his cause, while he opened the infirmary's door with a bit more force than necessary. His skin was immediately attacked by the hot weather that came with the midday sun shining bright in the sky, so he didn't waste time in moving towards the tent designated to be the camp's communication center, knowing that it was only a matter of minutes before the high humidity in the air soaked his hair and shirt.

"His experience with humans are like this: one guy he was friendly with ages ago and who didn't have a whole camp of snoops following him around; me; and fucking poachers," he said with an annoyed glare, "Do you see what I'm getting at here?"

"But I'm not a poacher..." Sam pursed his lips in displeasure and, yup! There were the puppy-dog eyes, as predicted.

"Yeah, and he said he would _maybe_ give you the benefit of the doubt based on my word alone," Dean sighed, rubbing his face in frustration, "but he wouldn't trust anyone else; and if he allows you to meet him than who's to say that no-one else would try to do the same?" he could see that his explanation was making Sam's unhappy pout grow deeper, but he also knew that after a few hours spent pondering about his words, the younger man would eventually let the whole argument drop – at least for now.

"He already made me promise to follow impossibly undirect routes to get to his nest to avoid anyone from following," he concluded just to further stress the naga's unwillingness in meeting other people, "he doesn't need a whole legion of psyched-up scientists to find a way to catch him unaware."

"Fine," Sam huffed – not without spending a few minutes exchanging glares with his brother – and crossed his arms on his chest, "but we need to find at least a better way to communicate. I mean, I know you ask him everything that I tell you to, but it would be so much faster if I could pose any follow-up question without you having to get back to me and back to Castiel again. The way it's going now, it's gonna take ages before I have enough material of interest about his species!"

"Cas isn't your scientific project..." Dean grimaced, not liking where the other's argument was going.

"I know," Sam raised a hand to interrupt him before he could continue, "that's not what I meant and you know it: if Castiel says he doesn't want to talk about something, I'm not going to pressure him," he clarified, "but I still have to make regular reports about our findings."

The older Winchester hesitated. He always felt a bit uncomfortable when his role as the expedition's source of information was addressed; he tried to avoid relaying anything that could put the naga in danger, but it still made his insides squirm with guilt every time he thought about it.

Cas might have conceded that, as long as Dean wasn't too specific about his whereabout, he didn't mind if his mate shared his knowledge with other people, but this didn't mean that the human liked the necessity of it.

"I don't know..." he shrugged, eyes shifting to stare at the ground with uncertainty and shame.

"If I don't send back enough material, the university will stop funding us," his brother's voice was quieter, like he understood what was passing through Dean's mind without him needing to spell it out.

No funds would mean no expedition, and no expedition would mean no Cas.

Dean could maybe stay behind and find a job in one of the small towns scattered around the rainforest's perimeter, but, not only that would considerably cut down the free time he had to spent with the naga, a lack of funds would also force Sam to go back to the other side of the planet, and he wasn't sure he could bare having his baby brother so far away from him.

"Fine!" the older Winchester conceded in the end, lips pressed tight with frustration, "I'll ask Charlie if she can come up with something."

Charlie Bradbury was their IT technician and the one that made sure they always had some form of communication going on, be it when they had to send updates back home, be it for contacting their families, or be it to make sure that even when exploring inside the forest they always had a way to ask the main camp for help if needed. If there was anyone who could find a solution to their problem, it was her.

Fortunately she was also the one that welcomed him when he finally stepped inside the tent, leaving his brother outside with an absentminded wave.

"Hey, Dean!" her voice came out as bubbly and excited as usual, and it only took a few moments before she was stepping around the guy she had been helping and was right in his face, "Finally back from the love nest?"

Of course it only took her a few words to make his cheeks prickle with warmth, "I've been here for almost three days, where have _you_ been?" he retorted, sending a glance to the other person in the room: he didn't seem interested in their conversation and all his attention was drawn by the screen in front of him. Dean was sure he had crossed the guy around the camp more than once, but he couldn't remember his name.

"Fixing stuff, as usual," Charlie replied with a roll of her eyes, "I've no idea how these people managed to survive in the wilderness before awesome me was hired; they can't even tighten a screw on a walkie-talkie when it comes loose!"

With a quick step she closed the distance between them and poked him in the ribs, "Now spill, how did your rendezvous with your dreamy snake go?"

"Charlie!" Dean hissed in warning, pressing his palm against her mouth to stop her from continuing down that road while there were other people in the room. A glance to the man still sitting at the computer station confirmed that the guy was now staring in their direction, a frown on his face, and he inwardly grimaced.

"Sorry for the ruckus," he called, hoping that the other didn't manage to actually catch what their discussion had been about.

"Na, it's ok, I was almost done anyway," the other replied after a few instants of silence. With deliberate slowness he dragged his chair back and rose to his feet with a friendly smile before starting to head towards the tent's entrance.

It was only after they were left alone that Charlie's excited gaze swept once again on Dean.

"So?!" she prompted him when he didn't give any inkling of wanting to appease her curiosity, "Come on, dude! You've been away for _a week_! Don't leave me hanging here!"

"You're worse than an old cat lady," Dean retorted with a grumble, while his mind replayed his latest visit to the naga: being able to pass time with Cas was always nice, and this time hadn't been any less so. By now they both were used to the most common quirks of each other's species, and they developed a very cozy routine usually involving hunting – since it turned out that, while the naga liked fruit, he was still one-hundred percent carnivore, and it wasn't a good idea for him to eat it too often – movie watching, attempts at teaching Cas how to read, and sleeping curled up in a pile of pretty scales.

(There were possibly also a great number of handjobs and blowjobs involved, but they weren't a stable part of the aforementioned routine as much as they were caused by "Oh, hey, in our attempts at getting comfortable, I _accidentally_ ended up with a face full of sheath. Would you look at that!" and other similar coincidences.)

"I literally have nothing else to do here aside from fixing everyone else's broken shit," Charlie replied with a shrug. "Now spill."

For a few instants, Dean didn't reply as he unconsciously worried his bottom lips with his teeth. He still wasn't completely used to her bubbly personality and the fact that she didn't seem to have much of a filter in general ended up draining his usual smoothness almost to a freaking drought.

She was the only one at the camp that knew about what was truly going on between him and Cas, not because Dean told her about it – heck, he still was gathering up the nerves to tell his brother about that – but because she seemed to possess an almost unnatural ability to read people's mind when it came down to their sexualities – if he weren't sure she was human, Dean would have suspected her of being some kind of siren mytholon.

Charlie claimed it was because of her extensive experience in the queer community before taking on this job, that her Queerdar had pinged to attention when they were introduced to each other for the first time.

(She also claimed that, after he came back from his ordeal in the rainforest and Castiel's daring rescue of his hide, Dean started to trigger her Kinkdar something fierce – which incidentally was also the reason why she started to poke and poke and poke, until he admitted to his relationship with the naga – but he tried not to think about that too much.)

"Can I give you a rain check on that one?" he sighed, rubbing his hand on his face, "I kind of came here 'cause I needed to check my email..." he _was_ waiting for a rather important one – one that involved trying to give Cas a surprise for their three-months anniversary, even though nagas didn't seem to celebrate such events.

It was proving to be a bit a freaking nightmare to arrange, and fuck, he hoped he would be able to organize everything in time, otherwise he would have to postpone it _again_ just because Ash had suddenly decided to go on a two-week-long trip around America with some friends of his – in the years Dean had known him, the guy never left the vicinity of the Roadhouse for more than a few days at a time; why did he have to start now?!

He tried to get a way to contact him through Jo, but she said the weirdo didn't leave any behind and the only thing Dean could do was waiting for the other to come back on his own – of fucking course.

"Fine," Charlie pouted and shushed him towards the computer that had been recently vacated. "Go do your thing, but then I want _details_!"

"Whatever," he rolled his eyes at her insistence, and took a sit: maybe this time he would be lucky and finally get some results.

******

"I'm not sure that's a good idea..."

The naga was peering at his mate with uncertainty, blue eyes looking a bit more muddled than usual and forehead scrunched up into a dubious frown. He was keeping his hands close to his chest, fingers carefully wrapped around half a dozen small eggs that he found in a nest while hunting for birds – the parents hadn't been around, but judging by the excitement the mytholon had shown for his findings, he didn't seem to mind.

"I know, I just..." Dean sighed, "Think about it? He isn't asking to meet or anything like that, he just wants to ask you some questions," if his arms weren't currently full of fruits and mushrooms, he would have treaded a hand through his hair in frustration.

They had gone hunting for food, since the mytholon didn't keep much in his nest when Dean wasn't around, and they were now making their way back after a few hours of gathering. Castiel didn't manage to catch anything – and the human was vehemently forbidden by the naga to do anything but watch out for predators, if he wasn't around – but the eggs seemed to please him anyway on account of the fact that a lot of birds around there didn't have a very long mating season.

"What if I don't want to answer?" the creases on Castiel's forehead deepened.

"Then you don't have to," Dean replied, "I already told Sammy that we're only doing this thing if he respects your privacy: you aren't a freaking lab experiment, you have all the rights to keep to yourself whatever you want."

He could see blue eyes staring at him with uncertainty, as if a part of the naga wanted to acquiesce to his request, but another louder one was doing its damn best at reminding him how badly that whole idea could turn out for him.

"Do _you_ want me to speak with your brother?" the mytholon carefully asked when they finally entered the clearing where his nest resided. They were at the furthest border of the pond from the cave, but at least now they didn't have to be as careful about their surrounding as before.

"Dude, it's not a matter of what I want," Dean frowned when Castiel stopped, tail slowly bunching behind him in tight distressed loops, "I mean, Sammy is my baby brother and, yeah, it would be awesome if he got along with my hum...mate," he said, his cheeks warming a bit like it tended to happen when he stated their relationship aloud, "but not if it makes _you_ uncomfortable in return."

For a few moments the naga stared at him without saying a word, his lips pressed into a straight line and his forehead creasing into a slightly helpless frown. Then a soft sigh left him and he gave a careful nod.

"I...I will think about it," he finally conceded.

Dean couldn't help the pleased grin that spread on his face at those words: he had been truthful when he said that Cas' comfort was his priority, but the possibility of his naga finally making friend with his brother still made something like gleefulness flutter in his chest.

With two long steps he closed the distance between them, only barely avoiding any of the fruit from rolling out of his hold, and pressed a kiss to the naga's mouth. A startled sound of surprise answered his sudden burst of affection, but Cas caught up with the program in just a few seconds.

"You're awesome, babe," Dean grinned against the other's lips only to have his own nipped in return.

"Indeed," the naga was quick to concur, his tone solemn before an amusement smirk made it's way on his face, "But you own me pie," he added, slithering away towards his nest before the human could reply.

With a chuckle Dean followed Castiel's lead, taking his time to carefully avoid the bulging roots and rocks that littered the ground, while he watched the other's black and blue tail shift in lazy curves next to him. He was so busy appreciating the way the sun hit the naga's scale, making the green outline of the diamond pattern shine even brighter, that it took him a moment to notice when the mytholon stopped moving.

He could see the tip of his mate's tail twitch in nervousness out of the corner of his eye, and when he raised his head to glance at him, he found that the other had stilled at about a dozen feet ahead of him, face turned to stare at his nest and tongue flicking madly through the air.

"Cas?" he called, tensing when a loud, threatening hiss left his mate.

Shit. That couldn't be good.

With hurried moves he let the fruit drop to the ground, not caring at the moment if they were damaged by the fall, and quickly got to the naga's side.

"Cas, what?" he asked, eyes trained on the entrance of the cave: he couldn't see anything weird from where he was standing, but judging by the way Cas' full attention was on his nest, there must be something waiting inside.

"I don't know," the other's words came out more slurred and hissing than usual, the possibility of imminent danger making the mytholon more careless with the way he enunciated words from a language that wasn't his own.

"There's something," he added but didn't elaborate further, his tongue flicking out once again to get another taste at the air in an attempt to determine what the smell he took a whiff of was.

Dean's hand instinctively twitched towards his belt – where his gun would normally be – and he mentally cursed when he realized what he was doing: Cas forbade any kind of firearm in the vicinity of his home, with the result that the human had taken the habit of leaving it back at the camp whenever it was time to meet with the naga again.

He had no way to help if whatever thing – be it another mytholon or even any kind of wild animal – was hiding in his mate's nest decided to attack them.

"Stay here," Cas ordered in a low threatening hiss for the trespasser that dared to invade his home. With the kind of agility and quickness that a creature of his size should not possess – no matter how snake-like they were – he placed the eggs still in his arm on a patch of grass and then slithered away before the human could realize what his intentions were.

"Fuck, wait!" Dean shout at his back, and all he could do was run after him, his heart jumping in his chest at the thought that his naga could be about to enter a territory fight, "Shit!"

It was when he took the first step inside, his sight still blinded by the difference between the sun outside and the darkness of the cave, that he heard a sudden exclamation of surprise, soon followed by a thud and a slightly strangled hiss of discomfort.

There were no sounds of pain – which was good – but Dean had no idea what the fuck was going on either.

"Cas?" he called, uncertain while he furiously blinking his eyes in an attempt to get them used to the shadows as soon as possible.

A loud hiss in a pitch he knew well answered him: it was the pleasantly-surprised sort-of-confused one – definitely not the alarmed one – and it was soon followed by an exasperated huff.

"There is no danger," Castiel's gravelly voice reached Dean just as he was finally able to make the other's shape out.

"The fuck is that?" he couldn't help but frown in suspicion when his gaze landed on the figure currently squeezing the life out of his mytholon in an excited hug. He couldn't make out much of them aside from long red hair and the – frankly impossible not to notice – tail that identified them as part of Cas' species, but the way his naga wasn't doing anything to free himself from the other's hold was enough of a clue that the two of them must know each other.

Familiar blue eyes raised to meet him at his question, and Castiel murmured something at the unexpected guest while he slowly disentangled from their arms.

When the other naga turned to face him, surprise and curiosity written all over their face, Dean was able to see a pair of equally light eyes – although not as blue, a part of his mind supplied – surrounded by pale orange scales, before his gaze unconsciously dipped down.

"This is one of by siblings," he heard Cas explain, "her name is Anna."

"Dude, why does your sister have breasts?" Dean couldn't help but frown, because – while kind of small – those were definitely two flesh mounds on her chest. "I thought your people didn't actually feed their kids like that."

When he raised his gaze back again, he was met with a pair of confused tilted heads and, ok, he could definitely see the family resemblance _now_. Anna's face was a bit slimmer and looked overall bonier, but there was no mistaking that puzzled frown that made her eyebrows pinch closer and her eyes squint.

"They are not," Cas carefully replied, as if he weren't quite sure why Dean was doubting it now. "Those are her venom glands."

Venom glands.

_Venom glands._

What the fuck even!

If he rummaged his memory enough, he was sure he would find something about Castiel saying that female nagas were extremely venomous and dangerous in comparison to males, but the true extent of it only became clear to Dean when he realized that, not only Anna would be able to "kill a tiger with a bite" but, judging from her breasts' size, she could probably kill several of them in a row.

Which made the way she was still staring at him all the more unnerving.

"Uh, hi?" he tried, uncertain, only to receive a deeper frown in return.

"She doesn't speak your language," Cas informed him, turning his attention back on his sister only when she hissed something at him that made him squint at her with displeasure.

Dean didn't know what the two of them were talking about, but he didn't miss the way his naga shift a few inches closer, not quite standing between them as much as being ready to intervene if necessary. That couldn't be a good sign, and suddenly all the things the mytholon said about his kind generally avoiding humans and considering them enemies came back to his mind.

Anna was not Cas: there was no reason for her to be as at ease with Dean's presence as his mate was.

When something brushed against his ankle, he almost felt his heart jump out of his chest. His gaze dropped to find the tip of Castiel's tail wrapping and unwrapping around it in what he recognized as some kind of unconscious nervous gesture on the mytholon's part.

"Cas?" he tried again when it was clear to him that Anna was still weighting him with eyes full of suspicion, "Should I go back out or...?" he didn't strictly like the idea of leaving Cas on his own – even if she _was_ his sister – but he was pretty sure his presence was creating more friction between them than needed it be.

"No," the naga was quick to answer, tail wrapping further up Dean's ankle to keep him where he was, "She is being a...a..." he hissed in frustration, "...a dumb assbutt! She refuses to believe that you're my mate!"

Refraining from snorting at the – frankly adorable – attempt at name-calling from Cas, the human turned his attention back on Anna, the female mytholon still peering at him like she was scanning his demeanor for any sign of falsehood.

Now that he was used to the lower light of the cave, it was easier for Dean to see the orange scales that framed her face, as it was distinguishing her tail from Castiel's: instead of his mate's sleek black and endless blue diamonds, she showed off an autumn-leaf orange base and red saddles framed in dark brown.

"Sister, I understand you don't trust me," he said before pointing at Cas, "but that naga over there is mine and you can be fucking sure he's off the market for good."

"Dean, I don't think she..." the male mytholon started to quietly protest at his comment, but Dean interrupted him with a glance.

"Translate, please?"

It took Castiel still a second of hesitation before he relayed Dean's words to his sister, his voice coming in low, hesitant hisses as if he wasn't quite sure how Anna would react to his mate's brashness. Her eyebrows pinched in consideration, her eyes narrowed while she studied that weird human in front of her, and then, without warning, her shoulders started to shake with what Dean recognized as barely-repressed laughter.

She looked far less on guard like that, her demeanor coming off more relaxed than suspicious when she turned a questioning hiss at her brother.

"Soooo," Dean tried when he noticed the tiny smile that her comment brought on Castiel's lips, "why is she here exactly?"

"She said she and our other siblings were worried since I haven't visited them in a while," the male naga replied, his and Anna's attention turning back on him. She looked amused, even though Dean knew she didn't understand a word of what he just asked, and when the human frowned at her, she chuckled aloud and started to shift closer, unabashed curiosity all over her face.

"Uh..." Dean tensed when she began to circle him, tongue flicking out every now and then to catch his scent properly, but let her do her thing without protest since Cas didn't seem alarmed by her behavior. Then a soft chuckle left her again before she sent what sounded suspiciously like a teasing hiss at the male naga, and Dean couldn't stay silent anymore.

"What?" he asked, glancing between the two of them: there was again that tiny smile on Cas' face.

"She says you're very pretty."

What the actual fu—

"Hey!" Dean replied with an offended glare, "I'm totally manly by human standards!"

The smile on his naga's face didn't withdraw, in fact, it only grew wider until it showed a hint of white teeth between his chapped lips.

"Dean, you have no tail," he said while his eyes lit with hidden mischievousness, "Quite frankly, you look small and armless – if sort of adorable – to us."

"Oh, fuck you!" the human shot back, unable to refrain from crossing his arms on his chest, even though he knew looking like a disgruntled kid wouldn't help his cause one bit, "I'm not a freaking puppy!"

"Uh-uh," the naga agreed with a nod, the smirk on his face still failing to withdraw, "You're, in fact, more of a hatchling."

Dean didn't reply with words, but he supposed the finger he flipped at his mate was answer enough.

Anna must have agreed with him because she burst out into a fit of laughter immediately afterwards.

The following minutes were split between Cas trying to calm his sister with disapproving hisses, Dean doing his best to ignore how utterly kissable his naga's pouting lips looked, and Anna giggling without shame at the two of them, until the female mytholon seemed to finally recollect herself.

With a few more hisses at her brother, she moved back next to him, giving him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. Cas' gaze when she pulled back was gentler and he leaned closer to press his mouth against her forehead.

Anna grinned, let out a few more friendly sounds, and then slithered past Dean without saying a word but with an amused smile once again on her face.

"Finished visiting?" the human asked, watching her go towards the entrance of the cave.

"She said she would tell our other siblings about this new development," Cas sighed, blue eyes following Anna's orange and red tail until it was completely out of sight, "They...they might want to meet you..."

"Hum..." Dean considered, not entirely sure that meeting any other member of Castiel's family was a good idea: Anna might have been fine, but with the tense relationship between humans and nagas there was no way everything would be solved without anyone trying to jump at anyone else's throat.

"Wait, how many other siblings do you have left?"

"Four older brothers and two other older sisters."

He was fucking doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anna's pattern is taken from a corn snake (Abbotts Okeetee morph): <http://cornsnakes.reptilery.it/?page_id=458>
> 
> Apparently I'm using venomous snakes' patterns for male (non-venomous) nagas and non-venomous snakes' patterns for female (venomous) nagas.


	6. James Novak

James Novak had a routine on Saturday mornings.

He would wake up at 8 AM (one hour later than on work days); slip out of the bed as silently as possible to avoid disturbing Amelia's sleep; quietly step downstairs to put the coffee on while he donned a pair of comfortable sweatpants, an old t-shirt and running shows; wait for the "liquid dose of motivation" – like his daughter took to calling it when she first started college – to be ready; and then make his way back to their room.

"Coffee is done," he would murmur against his wife's forehead with a soft kiss.

"Hum...have a nice run," she would mumble in reply with her eyes still closed and a pleased smile bending her lips, and Jimmy would kiss her again just because he could, before finally heading out.

Generally he would change his jogging route every week, but this particular Saturday morning he knew Amelia would be out meeting with some friends of hers by the time he was back – no matter what itinerary he decided to take – so indulged himself for one more day and decided to take the longest path.

He ran down to the end of the street; turned into the nearby park; met one of his neighbors taking out her dog – a lovely and extremely well-behaved golden retriever, that Claire never failed to fuss over when she came to visit; took a break to watch two seven-year-olds quarrel about who should feed the ducks in the pond; and then made his way back home.

It was when he took the first step in his garden that he found something unexpected waiting for him.

The "something" was a few inches taller than he was, had wide shoulders and bowed legs, and wasn't as much a "something" as he was a man that Jimmy had never seen before.

"May I help you?" he asked, watching as the stranger fumbled with the piece of paper in his hands before sharply turning around at the unexpected query.

"Y-y-you...why do you both creep up on people the same way?!"

This was certainly not the kind of introduction Jimmy was used to.

He watched as the stranger brought his hand at his chest, as if in instinctive attempt at calming his racing heart, and he took advantage of the few moments the other needed to recompose himself to study his face: he was a young handsome man – the kind that would attract people's attention by just walking down the street – with light brown hair and a strong jawline that was somewhat softened by his green eyes and the splash of freckles on his cheeks.

Jimmy had no idea how he was supposed to answer to the other's accusing tone, nor to the way he was being peered at – like his face, for some reason, was a particularly unusual sight – so he just raised a questioning eyebrow in return.

"Ah, shit, right…" his reaction seemed to be enough to dislodge the stranger from whatever thought had been passing through his head, and he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment before offering his hand.

"I'm Dean Winchester," the man introduced himself, prompting Jimmy to shake it in instinctive politeness.

"You're Mr. Novak, right?" the other asked, before quickly adding, "Of course you're. You're like—" he made a vague gesture with his hand that the older man didn't know how to interpret, "—that. And...wow, ok, this is fucking weird, I've to tell you, and I'm not entirely sure how to go about this either."

"From the beginning, perhaps?" Jimmy couldn't help but suggest, voice coming flat while he suppressed the instinct to roll his eyes.

He was starting to wonder if he should perhaps consider the possibility that this Dean was not particularly fine in his head. The incoherent and fragmented sentences that had come out of him so far, certainly didn't seem to help his cause.

"Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea," Dean sighed, his eyes darting around as if to make sure that no-one was watching the scene.

"Can we just...I don't know, go inside?" he hesitantly asked, hurrying to speak again when he saw the suspicious frown his words raised on Jimmy's face, "This isn't really something we should be talking about in public. We've a...common acquaintance, he...I would like to talk to you about him?"

He paused, licking his lips, before his shoulders slumped a bit and he finally managed to explain himself with just one name, "Castiel?"

James Novak was not particularly prone on trust – not in random people lurking in front of his door anyway – but he deemed this a good-enough reason to further investigate the situation at hand.

"Come inside."  


******

  
"Ah, thanks," Dean mumbled while he took the cup of coffee that he was being offered. He couldn't quite look at the other's face without staring yet, so he let his gaze drift to study his surroundings. The guy's home was nice in that suburban way that you would normally see in magazines: tidy, clean, welcoming, and giving the impression that a little legion of kids could pop up at every turn with the family dog running at their tails.

It was the kind of place Dean remembered his own home to be, before his mother died and his father went off the deep end of crazy and obsessed.

"So...Dean, right?" the other started, waiting for a nod before continuing, "Who are you exactly?"

He was staring back at the younger man with familiar blue eyes and an equally familiar squint of suspicion, but the lack of dark scales framing his face was jarring: the additional wrinkles and gray in his hair weren't so bad – they gave him an idea of how Cas would look once grown to the same age – but Dean found the abundance of pink skin to be more unsettling than anticipated.

Sam and Jess would have a field day hypothesizing how a human and a mytholon ended up looking so similar.

"I'm...well, I guess you could call me a handyman of sort right now," Dean sighed, scratching the back of his neck while he tried to sort out how to explain the situation to the guy.

When he asked Ash if he could find Cas' "Jimmy" based on the little information the naga had given him in the past, he really didn't think that the weirdest resident of the Roadhouse would actually succeed at it. He had _hoped_ to give his mate a bit of a surprise for their three-month anniversary – it felt so sappy to think about, but Dean didn't particularly care anymore at this point – but the more time passed without any news, the more he despaired he would actually manage through with his intentions.

Then Ash called, and Dean dropped everything, asked for three free days out of his brother, and made his way to James Novak's house as quickly as possible.

(He had to fly to even get to the right continent and he would have to fly again to go back.

If it weren't to make Cas happy, he would have abandoned the whole idea before setting even a foot on one of those flying metal traps that people insisted on using to imitate birds in the sky.)

"I used to be a cop," he continued, "but now I work for my brother: he studies mytholons and he's leading an expedition in the Eastern Rainforest, because one of the locals managed to take a picture of a naga's tail and it got back to his university. So we...well, _I_ was the one who stumbled on Cas – he doesn't really want to meet anyone else – and we became friendly, and he might have mentioned you?"

"I see…" Jimmy replied, one of his eyebrows having crept all the way up to his hairline at some point during the younger man's explanation. He didn't seem particularly impressed by it, and Dean had the strong feeling he hadn't assuaged the other's suspicion in the slightest.

It was weird how, in spite of being the same hue of blue, Jimmy's eyes looked so much sharper than Cas': the naga always bore a kind of lazy contentment with himself – only ever showing that level of attention when he was hunting a particularly difficult prey – but his lookalike's seemed to be silently warning him against trying to feed him any kind of bullshit.

"And how exactly did you find me?"

Dean licked his lips and then busied himself by taking a slow sip of his coffee, not quite sure how to read the other's squint when he posed that question: he was suspicious – as much Dean could tell – but to his ex-cop eyes it also looked like the other was carefully calculating what else he should further inquire about.

James Novak was worried about the naga's safety, the younger man realized.

It made him want to be upfront with the older man.

Dean owned him that much.

"I've a friend who is good with computers," he replied in the end, "he...has his ways to find information – even the less-traceable ones – and I asked his help because I kinda…" he paused, not sure how to explain the situation without ending up making his motives as sappy as he knew they were.

He let out a sound of frustration and rubbed the back of his neck, before continuing, "Listen, Cas misses you, sort of. I think he would want to see you again at least to say goodbye properly this time, but he can't go anywhere – not without causing a scene – and so I thought maybe I should find you for him instead and try to arrange something..."

Dean could feel his cheek burning at the last admission, and he was sure the older man had noticed the flush on his face as well, when he saw the other's lips part in a silent "oh" of realization that made him duck his head and hide his embarrassment behind the rim of his mug.

When he dared a quick glance up, Jimmy's blue eyes were watching him with hawk-like intensity, as if the older man had suddenly found the long-lost piece of a puzzle that finally – after hours of work – allowed him to see the picture as a whole.

"Let me get this straight," he carefully said, gaze still firmly focused on Dean's face. "You flew here from the other side of the world, with the specific purpose of contacting a perfect stranger in order to...what exactly? Give Castiel a present?"

The younger man grimaced, his lips pursing in an instinctive pout.

"...you make it sound so sappy when you say it like that…" he tried to protest, but his words instantly died in his throat when he saw the other's eyebrow rise pointedly. His cheek burned even hotter and he lowered his gaze once more to focus on his coffee: he had almost finished it without realizing it, and if the conversation continued in the same venue, he would have to find a new way to avoid the other's eyes.

Dean wasn't even entirely sure why he was being so skittish about the whole thing, but he suspected it had something to do with the unconscious need to impress someone his naga mate kept in high regards.

Too bad that his brain seemed to have reverted back to that of a teenager dealing with his first crush.

He felt a bit like he was asking the father of the prettiest girl in the school to be allowed to take her to prom.

"Well, I can't really come back with you," Jimmy sighed in the end, after a few moments of carefully studying Dean's reactions, seemingly deciding that, whatever he saw on the younger man's face, was fine with him.

"I've my work here, and I can't drop everything out of the blue, even if it is to visit Castiel. There are also...unfavorable circumstances that prevents me from going anywhere near the Eastern Rainforest," the last part was added together with a small sound of frustration and a light frown.

"Uh?" Dean absently rubbed the rim of his mug as a grimace made its way on the other's face.

"My wife – Amelia – she is...I don't know how much Castiel told you about the last time we saw each other – and I wasn't I actually present when it happened anyway – but she took quite a scare and made me promise to never accept again any kind of on-field jobs that could turn out so dangerous."

"Cas said your daughter got injured while they were playing," Dean nodded. "He said your wife freaked out thinking that he hurt her on purpose. She started to shout at him and freaked him out too, until one of his brothers found them and answered threats with threats."

"From what she told me, she was just trying to scare Castiel off: she really didn't mean to harm him or anything like that," the older man explained, rubbing his face in frustration at how that whole episode could have been handled far better than it had been, "but when I came back I found her frightened out of her mind and packing our things: she claimed she wouldn't remain in that 'godforsaken place' one minute more."

"I didn't realize how nervous Castiel made her," he concluded more quietly, "I saw the way Claire loved having another kid – even one that wasn't human – around, and I just forgot to take into consideration that she might have some reserves of her own about it…" he paused, his eyes raising again to meet Dean's own.

"I owned it to her to make sure that she was – that _we_ all were – safe, so yeah," he concluded with a mirthless chuckle, "no more uncharted rainforests to explore for me."

Dean chewed on the inside of his cheek. He took in consideration pointing out that the other shouldn't allow his wife's fears to govern his actions, but he supposed it wasn't really his place: he didn't have a wife nor a kid to take care of, and, while he knew that the latter had to be at least about Cas' age by now, he still wasn't an expert on the average suburban family.

He had a mate, but that was a whole different thing. The way he understood it, nagas really didn't have any equivalent to marriage: they were mostly monogamous once they choose a partner, but it wasn't like they had much opportunities to interact with other members of their species either.

"I get it," he sighed, leaning against the back of his chair.

"I'm sorry you had to come all this way for nothing," the older man grimaced, his hand twitching as if he wanted to rub his face again in frustration.

"It's fine, I thought you might say that – I had to at least try, but it's not like I expected you to come back with me just because I dropped Cas' name on you: for all I knew you might have forgotten about him," Dean replied, "I got a backup plan just in case."

"Hum?" Jimmy's forehead scrunched up in a frown when he saw the other's lips spread into a wide grin.

"How do you feel about making a video?"  


******

  
"Hey, Cas!" Dean stepped into the clearing with a grin on his face. The naga's back was turned to him, dark blue scales gleaming under the sun, and tail spread in a loose spiral around him. He was hunched over and messing with something on the ground, but the man couldn't quite see what he was doing.

At his call the mytholon turned his head, long tongue flicking in the air for a brief instant before a smile spread on his lips.

"Hello, Dean," he greeted when he stepped closer.

"Hey," the human breathed, leaning in to plant a short peck on the other's lips, that prompted a sound of approval out of Cas' throat. Dean still had difficulties distinguishing between all the different kinds of hisses the naga could emit – a lot of them sounded the same to him – but in the course of their acquaintance he'd become very familiar with that particular brand of pleased sounds.

"Whatcha doing?" he asked, peering over the other's shoulder with curiosity.

In front of the naga was spread a wide piece of cloth, a wooden bowl pinning each corner down so that it would stay still, and what looked like several lines of sliced fruit resting on it. He recognized bananas, mango, figs, and a weird-ass star-shaped thing which he had seen around but never tried before.

"I'm drying them out," Cas replied, going back to his work when the human hummed his understanding. "The ones I had are almost finished, so I thought to replenish them with a new batch."

The naga did tend to snack on them whenever they watched movies on the laptop – much like people would normally do with chips and pop-corn – and more times than not Dean had to make sure the mytholon didn't finish a whole bowl of them on his own: while he was generally completely in favor of stuffing oneself in all kind of terrible and unhealthy food, the naga still wasn't exactly able to properly digest fruit, and while he understood Cas had his own equivalent of a sweet tooth, he still would really rather avoid the other ending up feeling sick.

Normally the mytholon was good at balancing his own diet, but whenever the human was involved, he seemed to become easily distracted and prone to self-indulgence.

Dean considered it a compliment.

"I got something for you," his words made the naga pause to send a glace back at him, his head tilting on one side and his tongue sneaking out to flick in his direction.

"It's on my phone," the human continued, pulling out the device to wave it in front of the mytholon's face. "Wanna see it now?"

Castiel's lips pursed in thought. Dean could tell that the other wanted to spread all the fruit out before doing anything else, but he also could tell that curiosity was tempting him to leave the work half-done and come back to it later.

"I can finish here for you," he added, repressing the amused grin that was threatening to rise to his face, "I just need to spread out all the fruit left in the bowls, right?"

"And cover them with the other cloth," the naga slowly added, blue eyes fixed on the device in the man's hand while he worried his bottom lip with his teeth, "but you just came back: you should be resting instead of doing even more work…"

"Dude, it's fine, I'm not that tired," Dean chuckled, offering him the phone. "You remember of this works right? Yeah? It's the first video in the list, so you can't get it wrong. I'll finish here and then join you in the nest, ok?"

"Let me at least take you bag," Castiel shyly replied, the corner of his mouth bending up in a coy smile as he reached out to slide his mate's backpack from his shoulders.

"You're gonna love it," the human couldn't help but reassure, grinning wide and receiving a quick kiss on the cheek in return.

"I trust your judgment on the matter," the naga gave a low chuckle of his own, before his mate shushed him in the direction of their nest.

Dean watched him go, a smile still lingering on his face and his heart beating fast in his chest with excitement and anticipation. He kind of wished he could be present when Cas first opened the video and found himself faced with his rescuer's image, but he was pretty sure he would find out what the naga thought of his present regardless.

Whistling with satisfaction he got back to work, quickly laying the few pieces of fruit remaining on the cloth and then covering them with the spare one that was resting folded nearby. He tucked the hems so that no bug could sneak inside and then pinned once again the corners down with the thick bowls.

He had just finished with the last touches, when a sudden weight against his back sent him sprawled flat on the grass. He let out an undignified yelp of surprised, scrambling to turn over, only to find that he wasn't under attack – not from any wild beast anyway – but that his naga mate had decided to tackle him to the ground.

Castiel's eyes were wide, his pupils dilated, his tongue flicking between the two of them at a restless pace, and, when Dean tried to pull himself up with a laugh, he pushed him flat on his back once more.

" _Dean_ ," his name was almost growled against his face, and it was followed by a familiar deep hiss that made him freeze and tilt his head to expose his neck in some kind of weird Pavlovian response that he should probably examine at a later point in time.

"I have no idea how you did it," Castiel continued, his voice still low and rough as the naga leaned in to mouth at Dean's neck, pointy teeth scraping its sensitive skin, just enough for the human to feel them without having to break it.

"I have no idea what I did to deserve you," it was rumbled against his ear and it made him let out a needy whine he would normally be embarrassed about, "but you are the best mate I could have ever asked for."

He tried to move and get more frictions between their bodies, but the mytholon had already sneaked his tail around Dean's legs, binding them together in a firm grip that made it impossible for him to move anything below his hips.

"Dean," Castiel said, blue eyes boring in green ones to convey his will for him to _behave_.

"You are going to stay there, and you are going to stay still. And I'm going to show you how much I appreciate you."

When the naga slid down, Dean leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~In case you were wondering: yes, there is going to be a follow-up porny timestamp at some point. :,,,D~~  
>  This chapter now has a [porny timestamp](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4021762/chapters/15768406)!


	7. Mate

"...and don't start freaking out as soon as you see him!"

"Dean, this is the third time you say that. I get it, I'm not going to scare off your boyfriend," Sam rolled his eyes, his attention derailing on his brother long enough to send him a disapproving look for his overprotectiveness, before turning back on the uneven trail they were following.

"He's not my boyfriend…" Dean retorted, his voice coming out in a soft squeak before he cleared his throat and glanced away.

This was the worst idea.

He had no clue why he ever thought that making Cas and his brother meet would bring him anything but worry and a persistent sense of anxiety.

There were so many things that could go wrong: not accounting for the naga's wary nature and tendency to attack first and ask questions later when he felt threatened, there was also the ever-present issue that Dean still had to admit aloud the true extent of his relationship with Cas.

Sam might tease him about his mother hen tendencies towards the mytholon, but the older Winchester was sufficiently sure that it was chalked down to just his propensity to defend anyone he considered a friend, rather than to the fact that they had been shagging for months.

"I'm just saying, Sammy," he continued, trying to hide what was passing through his mind, "that Cas isn't really completely down with this whole 'meeting other humans' thing, so can you...can you just…" he sighed, stopping in his tracks to rub a hand over his face in frustration.

While the subsequent exchange of videos that the Jimmy debacle had spawned, also generated the unexpected result of dragging out of Cas the reluctant concession of doing the same with Sam – slowly getting the naga acquaintance with the younger Winchester – convincing him to meet in person had still been a pretty touchy subject to address.

The mytholon had finally conceded to Dean's pleas only when established that they wouldn't step anywhere near Castiel's nest, but that they would rather camp out in a small glade situated far enough from it to soothe – at least partially – his concerns.

"Dean," a loud sigh left his brother, and the older Winchester raised his gaze to meet his, "I know. I saw how he is even when it's only to make a video. I'm not going to press him for information or anything like that: if he's willing to share than it's more than welcome, but I really just want to talk to him in person, that's all."

There was both worry and impatience on his face, as if he couldn't quite believe that he had to actually express his harmless intentions aloud, but he was still willing to indulge Dean's issues if it meant that the other would stop fidgeting every few minutes.

"Yeah, I know, it's just…" with a frustrated sigh the older Winchester rubbed his face one more time, before straightening his shoulders with a "right, ok," and resume their hike through the forest.

It didn't take long for them to reach the meeting point after that, and after a bit more than an hour of avoiding invasive foliage and navigating uneven ground, the trees receded enough to reveal a small clearing carpeted in tall grass.

It was dry enough – which is to say, it was slightly damp, instead of completely drenched – that they could probably build a tent without problems, but Dean and Sam had learned on their own skin that the undergrowth tended to crawl with all kind of insects around there – leeches being the major offenders in many, _many_ unfortunate episodes – and therefore, it was much better to use a hammock and a waterproof cloth to protect them from the rain, instead of anything that touched the ground.

While Sam busied himself with starting to set up camp, the older Winchester quickly inspected the rest of the glade, making sure that no venomous snake was lurking in the bushes and shushing away with a branch anything that moved.

He had almost made it's way back to his brother when the sudden rustling of leaves above his head made him pause to look up.

"Cas?" he called, squinting in an attempt to identify the cause of the sound in the thick foliage, "That you, buddy?"

He had no soon finished posing that question that Sam gave a startled yelp, and then suddenly Dean's middle was wrapped in a pair of familiar scaled arms and his feet left the ground, while he was hauled up in the trees as if his body weighted less than a feather.

"Cas!" he yelled his mate's name when he took a peek at just how far down the forest's floor was, but any kind of further protest was promptly shoved out of his mind when the naga's head popped up between his legs and the other slithered his way up Dean's body until the latter was firmly held in place by a thick tail against his back and a solid chest pressing on his front.

He gave a muffled whine.

"Hello, Dean," the mytholon smiled against his lips, and the human instantly forgot all the wariness that came with having no control over his current precarious position: he was manhandled by the other enough times in the past to know he could trust Cas not to drop him by accident.

"Hey," he greeted in return, grinning when he felt soft lips press against his own.

"I missed you," the naga hummed, tongue flicking out to take his scent in, while blue scales shifted all around Dean to wrap him more comfortably around the length of his body.

"I missed you too," the human concurred, cheeks flushing a bit at the admission: he still had some trouble expressing his affection for the other aloud, but he was also willing to submit himself to the embarrassment if it meant dragging those lovely pleased sounds out of Cas.

"Although the sudden attack was kind of unexpected," he added, peering down to find most of his sight obstructed by branches and leaves. He could vaguely distinguish his brother's darker shape moving frantically about, as if he were trying himself to find Dean's exact position.

"I wanted to have you all to myself before…" he watched as Cas made a vague gesture with his hand that he wasn't sure how he was supposed to interpret. There were deep lines on the other's forehead and at the side of his pursed lips that betrayed how the naga was still probably not entirely convinced about the whole situation, and Dean couldn't help reaching up and plant a reassuring kiss on his mouth.

"It's ok Cas, it's only for a little while, you don't have to stay for more than—"

"Dean?" he was interrupted by Sam's anxious call, "Is everything all right?"

He sounded a bit like he was starting to freak out: from his position he probably could see even less of Dean than the latter could of him.

The older Winchester winced.

"Yeah, everything's fine! It's just Cas!" he shouted back, before letting a frustrated sigh follow his words. He eyed the naga's face, still hovering at a handful of inches above his own, and nibbled at the inside of his cheek.

There was still something he needed to do before making the mytholon and his brother meet.

"Cas, listen, I'm sorry to spring this on you so suddenly, but you see how Sam is…" he started, watching as the naga tilted his head in curiosity. "I mean, I wouldn't ask it of you if I had found the right time to tell him properly, but…"

"I don't understand…" the mytholon's forehead creased in confusion when he trailed off, and Dean let out another louder sigh of frustration.

How was he supposed to explain to him that, while not unheard of, admitting to being in a relationship with a mytholon was a bit of a huge bombshell to drop on anyone – especially if they were your younger brother!

"I mean, he tends to freak out over nothing," the human tried to make more sense, his cheeks flushing red at the embarrassment of having to explain the situation they found themselves in at the moment, "so I kinda am still trying to find a proper time to tell him about the whole...'being mated to you' thing..."

For several instants the naga was frozen into stillness by his words, blue eyes peering back at him without blinking and tongue halfway on its way to taste the air.

"…you...want me to act like you are not my mate in front of your brother?" Cas' voice came out slow and careful, as if the mytholon were still trying to decipher what was being asked of him and was having difficulties even conceiving such a notion.

"Hum, yeah?" Dean could feel his face go red at that admission: he knew he should have clarified the situation to Sam a long time ago, but he had been postponing that discussion for so long, that it only dawned on him the day before, while they were still packing, that it would be best to avoid giving his brother further reason to fuss over the naga.

"I promise I'll make it up to you," he added with a grin that he hoped came out teasing enough to assuage whatever worry the other might have at his request.

"I…" the mytholon started, only for words to fail him and his mouth to fall closed once again. It was difficult to interpret the look on Castiel's face: his eyes were a bit wider than usual, the pupils not really focused on Dean – but rather fixed at somewhere around the latter's collarbone – and his lips were slightly parted in an expression of dumbfounded puzzlement.

There was no further sighting of his tongue, now that it had darted safely back inside his mouth.

"Please?" the human tried again, understanding the other's reluctance, but also feeling dread fill his belly at the thought of how Sam might react if he found out about them, "I'll tell him another time – I swear I will – just...not now? I need to ease him on the idea slowly, or I know he will start spouting nonsense about how stupid of an idea this thing between us is..."

"How stupid of an idea this is…" Castiel repeated dumbly, voice so quiet that Dean didn't manage to hear properly what he was saying, nor to catch the way it quivered right at the end, before dying out.

"I…" blue eyes flicked up to stare into green ones, and the human plastered an encouraging smile on his face: he might be feeling like he was about to throw up while he waited for the mytholon's response to his request, but Dean wasn't going to try to pressure him into agreeing if the other really didn't want to.

"...all right…" the naga's quiet reply was all he needed for his shoulders to slump in relief. A grateful smile bent his lips and he leaned closer to press a kiss on the other's mouth.

"Thanks, Cas, you're the best."

The mytholon didn't comment further: he still looked a bit disconcerted by what had been asked of him, so Dean reached out to brush his fingers against his mate's cheek with affection and then leave another quick kiss on the bridge of his nose.

"Come on, get us down now, before Sammy decides to climb up this tree himself to find us," he winked with amusement. A wary smile broke on Castiel's face at his comment and the human deemed it good enough for now.

"We're coming!" he turned to shout down at his brother in warning, and he missed the way the naga's lips dropped as soon as his attention was focused elsewhere.

A strong arm sneaked its way around his waist, and he reached out one of his own to wrap it on his mate's shoulders.

"Jesus, Cas, no…" he shushed away the mytholon's free hand when he saw it inching closer to his legs with the obvious intention of hauling them up bridal style, "I'm not gonna fall."

A frown made its way in Castiel's expression at those words, a hard pinch of his features that for an instant seemed to drain completely all the sweet gentleness that usually resided on his face. Then the naga let out a loud hiss of a sigh and the creases at the sides of his eyes smoothed once again.

"I thought we already talked about this," he huffed as he started to make his way down the tree, keeping Dean and the upper part of his body steady while he let his tail do all the work of wrapping in lower and lower loops around the trunk.

The human's legs fell a bit awkwardly under him as they dangled uselessly in the air, but the naga's arm was like a solid steel bar around him and he felt no fear of slipping from his hold before reaching the ground.

As soon as his feet touched the forest's floor, the mytholon shifted away to give him more space and focused his attention on gathering the rest of his tail down from its arboreal perch. Dean watched as more and more coils slowly made their way around Cas in a relaxed hip.

"Oh my God…!" it was Sam's whisper of wonder that snatched the older Winchester's attention from his reverie on how pretty the naga's blue scales looked as they shifted in the few patches of light that managed to filter through the thick foliage of the forest.

A grin broke on his face as he turned to face his brother.

"Careful there, Sammy!" he laughed, feeling something warm swell in his chest at how Castiel's mere sight was able to put that expression of pure delight on the other's face. "Someone might start to think you're a fangirling teenager or something!"

"Jerk!" the younger man replied automatically, his eyes never leaving the mytholon staring back at him with uncertainty.

"So, wow, hi!" he greeted after a few more instants of awestruck wonder, "I'm Sam, nice to finally meet you in person!" he added, closing the distance between them and offering his hand.

He didn't seem to notice the way the naga twitched every time he moved – as if he were expecting to be attacked at any moment – nor the way his tongue flicked through the air with alarmed speed, but Dean knew his mate's tells pretty well by now, so he reached out to squeeze his shoulder.

"Take the hand, Cas," he said as he nodded at the offered appendage. "It's just a greeting."

After a moment of hesitation, the mytholon's blue eyes quickly darting sideways to glance at the older man, he carefully raised his hand to meet the one in front of him.

The grin that broke on Sam's face was blinding with happiness, and it seemed to have even a greater effect at making Castiel lose some of his defensiveness: his shoulders slumped a bit, his tail stopped writhing behind his back, and the stressed lines on his face smoothed out into low-key wariness.

"Hello, Sam," the naga slowly greeted back, "I'm Castiel."

When the smile on the younger man's face grew wider, the mytholon ducked his head in return: he was used to Dean's friendliness, but even his mate-not-mate had been wary when they first stumbled upon each other, and this kind of freely-given amicability felt weirdly intimate for someone he just met in person.

"Dean said you were insistent we became acquaintance," Castiel continued, tongue flicking out for an instant to show the lingering nervousness he still felt. "He said you...study my people?"

"Well, all kind of mytholons really!" Sam was quick to correct, not wanting to give the impression that he might have thrown his own brother at the naga with ulterior motives, "but don't worry, that wasn't actually why I wanted to meet you in person."

"It...wasn't?" the naga asked, confused, daring a glance in his mate's direction to see a matching frown on the other's face.

"No, videos were good for that," the younger Winchester replied with a shrug, ignoring the way Dean's eyes were narrowing in a glare at not being informed about what his real intentions were.

A short exchange of looks happened between them in the span of a few seconds, one in which the older man tried to silently convey all his disapproval, while his brother rolled his eyes in a sign that there was nothing to worry about.

"It's because Dean kept talking about you," Sam explained, turning his attention back to Castiel. "He was saying all kind of positive things – which he usually never does about anyone – so I thought that, as his brother, I should meet you properly."

Against all expectations, the mytholon seemed to perk up at those words, his face lighting up with understanding as he nodded in agreement.

"Oh. Yes, that isn't surprising," he allowed while he watched Dean's following outraged sputtering with a tiny smile quirking the corner of his mouth. "My siblings want to meet him too."

A loud gasp – that Dean would generally mock, if he weren't still busy muttering about how he certainly wasn't singing anyone's praises, but just commenting about Castiel's quirks aloud – left Sam at the naga's words, the former's eyes growing wide while he pointed an accusing finger in his brother's direction.

"You didn't tell me _that_!"

Dean shrugged noncommittally, "It's not like I'm gonna meet them soon…"

"Certainly not," Castiel concurred, his face scrunching up in a frown at that notion, "I don't think that would be a good idea. I should probably talk to them beforehand: they might think you are invading their territory and attack you otherwise..."

_Yeah, that doesn't sound like a good idea_ , Dean inwardly winced, still remembering the disquieting feeling he experienced when he was faced with Anna that one time and he was reminded of just how deadly nagas could be.

He trusted Cas to keep him safe if it came down to it, but that didn't mean he was in any hurry to enter the not-so-metaphorical den of snakes.

The awkwardness of that particular topic didn't seem to last for long, however, as – in spite of all his claims – Sam still proved himself to be unable to contain his excitement at finally being face to face with the mytholon that had so completely managed to capture his brother's attention.

They quickly finished to set up camp, interrupting their work only when Castiel would carefully inquire about this or that – the concept of a mosquito net ended up fascinating him so thoroughly that for a few long moments he seemed tempted to ask for one for his own nest – and by the time they were done, the idea of starting with an early dinner before night completely fell became very appealing.

"I will hunt for something," Castiel offered when the two humans began to go through their food options.

"Wait here," he added, his tail already shifting to wrap around the nearest tree.

"Cas, there isn't any need of…" Dean tried to stop him, but it was already too late, the naga vanishing in the foliage with a rustling of leaves. "And there he goes…"

"He does that often?" Sam asked, amused, as he stepped closer to peer at the end of Castiel's tail swishing out of sight.

"He's personally insulted by any kind of preserved food," the older Winchester replied with a theatrical sigh, "and don't even get me started on his obsession of eating raw meat because, according to him, 'you shouldn't burn perfectly good food, Dean! That's such a waste!'" he added, voice going gravelly in an imitation of the mytholon's deep scratchy voice.

He didn't notice the way his brother's expression filled with speculation at his fond tone, nor the way he seemed about to say something, only to shake his head in amusement.

"So I get this is an ongoing argument between the two of you," he grinned. "Should I thank him for finally managing to make you eat healthy food?"

"I already eat meat, thank you very much!" Dean huffed, mouth pursing in outrage at the mere notion that he would forgo any kind of meaty product.

"Didn't you mention something about making some kind of fruit pie with him?"

"Pie is a category all of its own!" Dean sputtered: how dare his own brother insinuate that he would eat anything coming from a tree! The gall of him! The gall!

"It's still made of fruit…" Sam retorted, a wide grin splitting his face in half.

"You're no longer my brother!" it was what he got as a muttered reply before his brother stomped off back to the campsite.

  
******

  
"I'm back!" it took about an hour before Castiel's voice startled them, the naga slithering down his perch to join them back on the ground.

"Cas," Dean couldn't help but stare at the bundle of colorful feathers in his arm, "did you just exterminate a whole flock of birds?!"

"I didn't know how hungry you were…" the mytholon replied with a small half-hearted shrug, blue eyes darting in Sam's direction while he shuffled a bit to gather the rest of his coils in tighter loops.

The younger man inclined his head with a questioning raise of his brows, not entirely sure why the naga was staring at him now. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of response, but he had now idea about what.

"Is that a freaking _pig_?!" it was Dean's baffled shout that interrupted their silent staring contest.

"I think that's technically a boar…" Sam commented, moving closer to study the limp animal wrapped in scales halfway through the length of Castiel's tail.

"A pretty young one, but still…" he added, sounding unperturbed by his own observation, while his mind was undoubtedly already cataloging that new piece of information about the naga's habits.

"I don't eat what I can't swallow whole," Castiel explained as his eyes tracked Sam's movement, seemingly still feeling a bit of residual wariness in his presence, "but I thought you might want to…"

Eying the dead animal wrapped in the mytholon's unyielding blue scales, Dean's mouth seemed to take a life on its own and blurt out, "Cas, I'm not saying we don't _want_ to, but this is way too much for two guys…" before he could remind himself how badly the other tended to take those kinds of comments.

"I didn't mean it like that!" he was quick to add, sending a worried glance in Castiel's direction. The naga didn't seem to have taken offense, his eyes weren't downcast, nor his posture was tight and defensive, but there was a coy, embarrassed tilt to his head.

"I know, it's just…" the other started, only to interrupt his justification midway to give Sam a glance and duck his head down once more. His tail was shuffling behind his back, but it didn't bunch in the pile of tight coils that generally pointed at him being distressed and ready to attack.

He looked a bit adorable in the way he was ever so slightly swaying back and forth in uncertain bashfulness, and Dean had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep himself from reaching out and kiss those maddeningly chapped lips.

"Oh, I see!" it was Sam's exclamation that brought him back to the topic at hand. "Thank you for always making sure that my brother eats properly."

A wide smile split Castiel's face at those words, a sound softer than a hiss leaving his throat, and then he shuffled again in that way that meant he was embarrassed but pleased.

Dean should have really guessed it was something like that.

"Hey, I'm not a kept wife…" he grumbled, feeling his cheek warm up in return at the obviously happy aura that the naga was giving off.

"You certainly have the nurturing nature of one!" Sam laughed, not noticing the way Castiel seemed to deflate just a little at his brother's comment.

"Shut it, bitch!" Dean huffed, sending a searching glance at the mytholon out of the corner of his eye.

"No...no, you are not…" Castiel wasn't meeting his gaze as he confirmed with a wry forced smile, "...my mate…"

The older Winchester really needed to tell his brother about his current affair with the naga as soon as possible: he wasn't entirely sure he would be able to stand those kinds of dejected expressions on the other's face for long.

Nibbling the inside of his cheek for a few hesitant moments, he evaluated the pros and cons of trying to soothe his distress – he wasn't entirely sure Sam wouldn't start to suspect something if he did that – but Cas' outraged exclamation stopped him short before the silent deliberation in his head could be concluded.

"...is that a _fire_?!"

Well, Dean did warn his brother about _that_ at least.

  
******

  
"We already went over this, Cas: humans can't eat raw meat the way you do," Dean huffed as he turned over the small camp stove two of the birds he had previously plucked and eviscerated.

"Have you even _tried_?" the naga retorted, eyes squinting suspiciously at the crackling skin of the preys he had so generously caught for them.

"No, this time Dean is sort of right," Sam offered, his gaze following the way the mytholon was clutching the one bird he had claimed for himself like he expected them to snatch it from his grip and forcibly cook it on the fire. Knowing his brother, Sam wasn't entirely sure this wasn't a legitimate worry on Castiel's part.

"Raw meat is much more likely to get contaminated. For you that isn't an issue since you have always been eating it – nagas probably just developed immunity to the most common diseases that can spread through it," he explained, "but humans started cooking their food a _long_ time ago, so we never quite got there ourselves…"

"I suppose it makes sense…" the naga slowly concurred, his nose still scrunching up a bit in distaste at the idea, but finding it now at least reasonable enough.

"Still, I don't understand how you can trust fire so easily," he added with a light frown, "it's too unpredictable."

Raising his gaze from the stove, Dean sent him an amused glance at those words.

"Dude, it's just fire, are you telling me you're scared of fire?" he asked with a low snicker that earned him a kick on his shin by his brother. When he turned his gaze on Sam, the younger Winchester seemed about to go into one of his tirades on how perfectly normal was for people to fear something that could cause them harm, but Castiel was quicker to reply.

"Dean," the mytholon started, voice flat as he stared back at his mate-non-mate with an unimpressed raise of his eyebrow, "the first time we met, you almost burned alive."

Dean grimaced at the reminder, the ghost feeling of painful heat stroking his skin making the hairs at the back of his neck raise in solidarity.

"...point," he grudgingly conceded before going back to taking care of his and his brother's food.

After they finished their meal and the fire was properly doused – Castiel even going as far as poking at its remains with a stick to make sure there was no cinder left alive – the older Winchester watched the naga twist in the tall grass near the edge of the small clearing, getting his scales moist before lazily stretching his way back to them, upped body coming to rest flat against the ground at Dean's side, while his tail trailed behind him in a protective arc that encompassed most of the small camp.

He looked kind of adorable with his hair as tussled as they now were and with his scales showing light patches of green from where the grass' juice was still lingering on them. It made Dean want to reach out and rub them away to clear the underlying dark blue, but, as soon as he his hand twithced, the naga's gaze darted towards him with a confused frown scrunching up his face. Then Castiel shifted just slightly away from him, and the older Winchester remembered that they were supposed to act like they weren't involved with one another as anything more than friends.

Dean felt a moment of irrational resentment against his brother for being there when he wanted to wrap his arms around the cool scales of his naga's chest and kiss his lips until he managed to drag those familiar pleased hisses out of him.

"So, is it common for nagas to have blue patterns?" Sam asked while he offered them a bottle of water. Castiel watched as his mate-non-mate twisted the cap and took a long mouthful out of it, before he answered.

"I don't think so," he tilted his head, lips pursing in concentration.

"My scales are for the most part blue, yes, and Michael's scales are even darker than mine, but our other siblings tend to have brown or yellow scales. Sometimes red," he explained, tail moving behind his back as if to underline how unusual he looked compared to his brothers and sisters.

"No green?" Sam inquired further, a pondering expression on his face while he pulled out a tablet out of his bag to take note of Castiel's words.

"Not that I'm aware of," the mytholon replied after a short pause, "but I've never met any other of our people, so I don't know if the colors of our scales are common or not: I know that Gabriel's mate's are almost completely black, but that is the extent of nagas not belonging to our old nest that I know of."

Humming in consideration while he wrote down this last bit, the younger Winchester let his eyes linger on the flat surface of the screen for a few more instants before raising his gaze once again to peer back at the naga.

"Would you mind if I took a couple of pictures of your pattern?"

Dean watched the tip of Castiel's tail twitch twice at his brother's request. Normally it wouldn't worry him – he had seen the naga repeat that gesture when he was excited or happy – but, coupled with the way the mytholon's shoulders hunched ever so slightly and his pupils narrowed to thin vertical lines, it made warning bells ring in his mind.

"Why?" Castiel carefully asked, his voice coming out careful and unsure. When it came to having his image permanently recorded anywhere, he was always very shy: even when exchanging those few short videos with Sam to appease the latter's curiosity, he always kept himself mostly hidden behind Dean's broader figure.

The older Winchester had inquired him about it the first time it happened, finding that behavior amusing even as Cas tried to explain that it simply _felt wrong_ to allow himself to be seen so easily by someone that wasn't either his family or his mate.

Would it be weird if he pointed it out right now?

Would his brother catch up on how unusual it was for Cas to be so relaxed around him, and start suspecting the true extent of the relationship between the two of them?

"Oh, it's nothing dangerous," Sam replied, not noticing the uneasiness with which his query had been met: he was already too busy trying to decide which part of Castiel's tail he should take a picture of.

"I thought it would be easier than drawing it by hand. Do your siblings have similar markings?"

Dean watched as Castiel surreptitiously tried to shift his tail away from Sam's attention, while he answered, "No, for the most part they have...blotches; the closest to mine are Gabril's, but with three points instead of four."

When the click of the camera filled the air, the naga visibly flinched and quickly gathered his tail behind his back, expression growing alarmed.

"Sammy!" Dean finally snapped, unable to resist intervening when the mytholon looked so ready to bolt: mate or not mate, Sam really needed to tone his inner nerd down.

"What?" blinking in confusion at being so suddenly scolded, the younger Winchester sent a frown in his brother's direction.

"Cas doesn't want you to take pictures," Dean replied with a scowl as he tried to snatch the other's tablet out of his hands. Sam pulled away to keep distance between his precious noting device and his brother's grabby paws.

"How would _you_ know?" the younger man shot back, "He didn't say anything about it…"

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean could see Castiel's wary gaze jump back and forth between the two of them, and it made him clench his jaw in response.

"I just know," he insisted, trying once again for the object of the quarrel and once again failing to reach his objective.

The naga was starting to slowly inch away from the both of them.

"That sure doesn't sound like a convincing reasoning," Sam huffed, neither noticing the effect the discussion was having on the mytholon, nor the way the latter was now emitting a low hiss of nervousness.

It wasn't missed by Dean: as soon as Castiel let out the first sound of uneasiness, the older Winchester's face contorted in a glare, and then suddenly he was throwing himself at his beloved baby brother to get his hands on the thing that was the cause of his mate's distress.

"I'll show you convincing reasoning!"

"Gah! Dean! What the hell!"

They both tumbled to the ground in a pile of limbs.

It wasn't like they weren't used to wrestling matches – when they still were kids filled with energy, it was quite a frequent way for them to resolve their disputes – and it wasn't like either of them doubted that it was anything other than brotherly messing about, but they never thought what their "friendly exchange of opinions" looked like from an outsider's point of view: they were a pair of big strong man fighting their way out of a disagreement, but, to them, it was just a normal thing that came with being siblings.

In hindsight, Dean should have guessed that his overstrung mate would misinterpret the situation so thoroughly.

He had barely the time to be pinned to the ground by his little brother's larger mass, and quickly make up a countermeasure to reverse their positions, that Sam's body was sharply torn apart from his, a loud yelp of surprise leaving the latter at about the same time as a loud, blood-chilling hiss filled the air between the three of them.

Even as he scrambled to sit up, Dean already knew what he was going to see: sure enough, his gaze landed on Castiel's shoulders, the naga having fisted the front of Sam's shirt in his hands to keep the younger man flat on his back, while he leaned in to hiss his unspoken threat right in the other's face, fangs bared and pupils reduced to a pair of thin vertical slits.

Sam's eyes were wide with fear, and he was frozen on the spot, much like a mouse faced with a hunting snake would. His hands were still down at his sides, and he looked too taken aback to even think to react at the mytholon's sudden outburst.

"Fuck! Cas! Stop! He wasn't attacking me! Stop!"

Castiel didn't seem to hear Dean while he shouted those words, his attention completely taken by the perceived threat at his mate-non-mate.

The older Winchester scrambled to his feet and launched himself at the naga, his ex-policeman training kicking in even before a concrete plan of action had fully formed in his mind. At first he tried to pull the mytholon away from his brother by wrapping his arms around the other's chest – not wanting either of them to get injured if it degenerated into a scuffle – his muscles flexed and his teeth clenched from the exertion, but it was like trying to move a stone wall: the naga didn't as much as acknowledged his attempts.

With panic raising in his chest, he watched as Castiel let out another dragged-out menacing hiss, blue eyes firmly focused on the man underneath him.

In spite of his wider shoulders and bigger size, Sam looked very small.

"Do _not_ threaten my Dean. I won't allow itkssssssssss!" the last part of the mytholon words came with what the older Winchester guessed to be some kind of additional promise of retaliation in the naga's language.

They went on for quite a few seconds – enough for Dean to decide what to do next: keeping his left arm firmly wrapped around the Castiel's middle, he used the other to grab his mate in a chokehold. He wasn't going to harm the naga, but he needed to make some distance between him and his brother for at least enough time to calm the mytholon down.

He was ready to use all his strength – knowing now that anything less wouldn't work against the other – but at soon as the crook of his elbow snugged under Castiel's chin, the mytholon froze: he didn't let himself be moved away, but he wasn't so persistently hissing at Sam either.

"...Dean?" Cas' voice sounded hesitant, as if for some reason he were suddenly uncertain about how to deal with the current situation.

Without thinking, Dean squeezed his hold a bit tighter, and he watched in alarmed amazement as the mytholon let out a deep breath and relaxed against him, becoming pliant to his silent requests and letting himself being pulled off Sam with ease.

"Cas?" Dean couldn't help but call him, worried, when the other's full weight rested against his chest. Castiel wasn't doing anything to free himself from his hold, in fact, he seemed perfectly content letting Dean do whatever he wanted with him.

Sometimes the older Winchester really wished there were some kind of manual on how nagas exactly worked.

After exchanging a quick glance with his brother, making sure that the latter was fine, he focused his attention back on the bundle of scales resting in his arms. Castiel's head was resting against his shoulder, tilted back so that the bent of Dean's elbow could fit against the exposed neck, and his eyes were half-closed in what – bafflingly – looked like contentment.

"Cas?" the older Winchester tried again to catch his attention only to receive a distracted hum in return.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see his brother watch the scene with unexpressed questions crowding all over his face, waiting to be properly asked, and when their gazes met again, Dean could only give a small helpless shrug of "dude, I don't know either…" before the familiar feeling of a flicking tongue brushed against his cheek.

When he turned his attention back on the naga, Castiel's face was so close to his, that it made him wonder how he was supposed to convince his brother that this was even remotely platonic.

It certainly didn't help when the mytholon closed those few inches separating them and nestled his nose against the hinge of Dean's jaw.

"Oh...hum…"

Dean couldn't look at his brother: if he were better at dealing with these kinds of sudden adorable onslaughts from his mate, maybe he would be able to bullshit his way out of this situation, but, as it was, his cheeks felt on fire and he had no doubt that his whole face betrayed in neon red colors the embarrassment he felt at the moment.

"Should I leave you two to talk about it…?" Sam sounded hesitant while he posed that query, and the older man was sure that if he had the courage to take a peek at his expression, he would find the other's eyes wide with astonishment.

"Y-yeah…" he managed to croak out after clearing his throat, "I've no idea of what is going on with him either, so I might need to...hum…"

Although he wasn't sure himself what he was going to finish that justification with, his brother seemed to understand that the two of them needed some kind of privacy, so he moved further back into the camp, where their backpacks were still resting, and started to rummage their content in a very blatant attempt to just find _something to do_.

Dean supposed he would have to be content with that.

With a sigh he carefully lowered the both of them down until he was sitting on the grassy ground, the naga's back laying against his chest, and he nudged Castiel's head with his own to catch the other's attention.

"You do know that we were just dicking around, right?" he asked, "We do that every once in a while, it's just for fun."

"You...fight for fun?" Cas inquired, light crinkles of confusion making their way around his nose.

"Yeah, well, we don't even actually consider that _fighting_ ," Dean explained. "Sometimes with siblings it just kind of happens, but it's never very serious: no-one is going to get injured by anyone."

"...I think I understand," after a long pause the mytholon finally conceded, "it's the same way me and my siblings used to have contests of strength with our tails. The way you lunged at your brother, I thought...we only do that if we want to attack an enemy, so I thought it was a serious fight between the two of you."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Dean hummed, a bit sheepish while he shuffled Castiel's weight around to make it rest more comfortably against him, "I didn't mean to freak you out."

"It is all right…" the naga replied with a soft sigh, eyes going half-lidded when the older Winchester's hold around his neck tightened slightly. He looked a bit like he was about to fall asleep, and while there was a nice relaxed look on his face, it also reminded Dean of something he had meant to ask the other for quite some time.

"Uh, Cas? What's with the neck thing?"

"Hum…?" the mytholon gave a drowsy little sound of inquiry.

"You know...the 'neck thing'…" Dean tried again, a bit unsure how to describe what he was talking about. "Your obsession with putting your tail around my neck?"

"Yesssssssss," a pleased hiss left Castiel at the reminder, as if just thinking about it filled him with bliss. His tongue flicked out to taste the air between the two of them and he snuggled closer against Dean's chest.

"You're my mate," he whispered more quietly, "I wrap my tail around your neck and you don't even flinch. I could easily break your neck, but you trust me not to harm you and you don't even tense under my scales," he turned his head to press a quick kiss under the human's jaw and then rested once again against him without giving any hint of wanting to move.

"You are the best mate I could ask for," he concluded, contentment and pleasure dripping from his every word.

Dean's cheeks felt a bit hot after Castiel's explanation.

The way the mytholon spoke about it, it sounded like it was some kind of common knowledge in naga society when it came down to their mates: they were so skittish and suspicious by nature – much like the reptiles they took after – that showing any level of trust towards anyone else was akin to them to a wordless declaration of affection.

"Is that why you reacted like that when I put my arm around your neck?" Dean finally asked, wanting to understand if he was getting the whole concept right.

Another pleased hiss escaped the naga as he nodded in agreement.

"You're my mate," Castiel explained, "I know you won't harm me, and I wanted to show you that. I know that I…" he paused, hesitation darkening his expression for just a short time before it cleared once again with resolution, "...I know that I was being remiss in letting you know that I do trust you, Dean! I trust you more than anyone else I know! I know that was why you were hesitant to present me to your brother as your mate, but..."

Oh hell no.

"...but I didn't know _how_ to show you! You have no tail and you didn't seem to have any interest in even touching my neck, so I thought perhaps I wasn't being good enough as your—"

"Cas, no, stop that thought right there," Dean interrupted, his chest clenching in sympathy and shame at the thought that he made the naga feel so lowly of himself without wanting to.

"You're misinterpreting the whole thing," he began to explain, trying to sound calm even if there was a part of him that wanted to scream in frustration at the giant mess that seemed to have developed under his feet without him even realizing what was going on.

"I didn't _know_ it worked like that for nagas. Humans...we don't really have anything like that, and so I didn't know it would make you feel in that way, because I didn't know there was anything missing," he said, gaze firmly locked with Castiel's to silently convey how honest he was being with that remark. "The reason I didn't want to tell Sam wasn't because of you, it was because of _me_. I was being selfish and I thought that _I_ could avoid a conversation that was bound to end up with weeks of teasing and jokes at my expenses."

"Cas, it never even crossed my mind that _you_ could not be enough for me. To be perfectly honest, you're way out of my league!"

When he peered at Cas' expression again, he found that, instead of the happiness he had expected after his clarification, there was still hesitation written on the other's face. Certainly there was also a hint of hope in his eyes, but the way the naga's lips were pursed in doubt, or the way his tongue kept nervously flicking between them, made it clear that the latter still wasn't completely convinced by his words.

Did he think that Dean was being merely kind? The mytholon seemed to be under the weird impression that Dean was a nice person after all…

This necessitated more drastic measures.

"All right, get back on your tail, we're gonna do it differently," he ordered, making the lines of Cas' face turn even more confused as he nudged the mytholon free from his hold.

As soon as he was back on his feet, Dean wrapped his hand around the other's, entwining their fingers to squeeze them reassuringly.

"Hey Sammy!" he called, his heart rate picking up at the thought of what he was going to do next.

When the younger man looked back in their direction, confusion making its way on his face, Dean had to bite his lip not to give up before even trying. With a deep breath he stepped closer, Castiel slithering behind him without needing to be asked, and only stopped when he was standing at two feet from his brother.

"I think we're gonna need to do the introductions again," he said, nervousness making his insides churn.

It was only because, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Castiel staring at him with eyes wide in hopeful wonder that he managed to steel himself enough to continue with the next part of his plan.

"Cas, this is my baby brother Sam," he started, watching as his brother's forehead creased even further in confusion.

He could do this, he definitely could.

"Sam, this is Cas. He is my mate."

The bright smile that split Castiel's face at his words, was definitely worth whatever was going to come next.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone interested I've a Tumblr where I post all my fanfictions and fanarts, you can find it here: <http://dragon-scribbling-scribbles.tumblr.com/>
> 
> If you're interested in my personal blog instead, it's over here: <http://dragoneyes.tumblr.com/>


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